The IMPACT of CognItıve Styles on desıgn students’ SPATIAL KNOWLEDGE FROM VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS

ABSTRACT

In parallel with the technological developments dominating usage of digital tools in science and education, caused the transform of knowledge in new ways. The reflection of these integration is seen in design discipline as its active role in this circle whether in practice or in the era of education, Benefit from the capabilities of new technologies in the education process for increasing design students’ spatial knowledge,  benefit from them  digital tools also effect their carrier life in positive direction. By noticing the traditional education methods which are still using in many design school, the endeavor indicates that determine the appropriate learning method by considering individuals different cognitive style. The cognitive styles mean classify individuals according the way of perceive information and process it. Through this way, as subjects of the study, students categorized in respect to their cognitive styles whether field dependence or field independence, and then the relation between their cognitive style and spatial knowledge acquisition from virtual environment was observed. While defining digital tools in design education, the need of differences related to cognitive styles should be considered, this is supported by the data from this study which are indicating the increase of students’ spatial knowledge in different scale of virtual environments.