Spatial Skills Aren’t Fixed, but Often Missing

When Scott Traylor arrived at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he wasn’t looking for a fresh start, he was seeking momentum. A veteran of the edtech world, Traylor had spent years designing interactive learning tools for children in partnership with organizations like Sesame Workshop and LeapFrog. But something kept tugging at him: a quiet, often overlooked obstacle that seemed to derail even the most promising students in STEM.

That challenge lies at the heart of Spatial Sense, a project Traylor has been working on during his time in the Learning Design, Innovation, and Technology (LDIT) Program. The idea is rooted in research showing that spatial reasoning — such as the ability to mentally rotate 3D objects — plays a critical role in fields like engineering, biology, and architecture. It’s a skill many students never formally develop, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds.

Traylor first encountered this issue while teaching computer science and designing learning products for early learners. But it was through interviews with university deans and deeper dives into STEM retention data that the urgency became clear. “It’s not just a learning gap,” he says. “We’re losing too many students, especially women and those from disadvantaged communities, because this one skill has been neglected.

“At HGSE, I’ve been able to turn a fuzzy idea into a focused, actionable plan,” he says. Courses with faculty like Professor Karen Brennan and Lecturer David Dockterman helped refine the vision, which is to develop a research-informed assessment that identifies spatial reasoning gaps among incoming college students, followed by a scalable, low-cost learning intervention that universities can implement early in the academic journey to help students succeed in STEM. To advance the concept, Traylor has drawn on mentorship from Phil Green of the Harvard Innovation Lab (iLab) and expanded his research base through cross-registered courses at MIT, deepening both the technical and strategic dimensions of the project.

While Spatial Sense is still in development, the potential is already drawing attention. The concept was recently recognized as a finalist for the Ingenuity Award under the President’s Innovation Challenge, a university-wide competition hosted by the iLab.

The long-term goal, Traylor says, is to offer colleges an accessible way to assess and support students' spatial abilities before they arrive on campus. He references a 2008 study by Harvard researchers, published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, which found that 21 days of targeted practice in spatial reasoning tasks led to significant improvements, not only in the tasks practiced, but also in untrained spatial tasks, demonstrating transferable skill development. “Spatial ability isn’t fixed,” he says. “It’s malleable. And we can support its development. We just haven’t done it at scale yet.”

Throughout his time at Harvard, Traylor has kept a strong focus on equity. “STEM fields are still predominantly white and male,” he notes. “There’s a lack of diversity in who gets to thrive — and that has everything to do with how we prepare students, not just who they are when they arrive.”

Currently, Traylor is actively pursuing fellowships and alumni pathways to continue development of the project after graduation. “This idea is bigger than me,” he says. “It’s about giving more students a fair shot at succeeding in fields that shape the future.”

As he looks ahead, Traylor is focused not just on refining Spatial Sense, but also on building partnerships that can carry the work beyond HGSE. For him, this year has been about more than developing a venture, it has been about finding the right ecosystem to explore big questions and bold possibilities.

“I came to HGSE because I believed there were people here who could help me think bigger, and I was right,” he adds. “This journey has been about turning a persistent question into a real possibility.”