Trends & opportunities in visualization for undergraduate mechanics education: A scoping review & thematic analysis

Visual representations are ubiquitous in undergraduate mechanics education, shaping how students interpret and interact with disciplinary knowledge. Despite their central role, our understanding of how students learn from these visuals remains limited and fragmented. To date, no review has mapped the existing literature at the intersection of visualization, mechanics, and undergraduate engineering education. To address this gap, we conducted a scoping review and thematic analysis of 32 scholarly works, drawn from over 9,000 articles across four databases. In addition to a descriptive summary of the results, we present four key themes that highlight recurring patterns, perspectives, and insights within the included literature: (1) representational competence in mechanics problem-solving, (2) the link between visual features, conceptual understanding, and problem-solving abilities, (3) domain knowledge and visual representation in mechanics, and (4) the impact of visualization modalities on mechanics instruction. We also identify a range of design strategies and instructional considerations that support effective visualization use. Most importantly, this review outlines key directions for future inquiry, with implications for educators, researchers, and media developers seeking to enhance teaching and learning through visualizations in undergraduate mechanics education.