Integrating Makerspaces in Higher Education: Constructionism Approach to Learning (original) (raw)
Related papers
A. Brooks, E. Brooks & C. Sylla (Eds.), Interactivity, Game Creation, Design, Learning, and Innovation (pp. 343-352). 7th EAI International Conference, ArtsIT 2018, and 3rd EAI International Conference, DLI 2018, ICTCC 2018, Braga, Portugal, Proceedings. Springer International Publishing: Cham., 2019
Despite the growing popularity of makerspaces in education, we currently have little understanding of the conditions and processes that promote students’ design thinking and knowledge creation in these digitally-enriched learning environ-ments. To address these research gaps in current research knowledge, we draw on two ethnographic case studies on students’ maker activities situated in Canada and Finland. In the Canadian study, the focus is directed to analysing students’ design actions carried out in a five day long “microcycle” of learning by individu-al students in a Maker Lab. In the Finnish study, attention is directed to investi-gating forms of students’ collective knowledge creation during an elective course in a makerspace, The Fuse Studio. This paper shows that design thinking is a po-tentially fruitful way to build students’ global competencies and to approach knowledge creation in a makerspace environment as students engage in interest-driven making, requiring various levels of instructor/peer support, from inde-pendent making to guided inquiry.
From Design to Reality: Guiding First-Year Students from Design to Makerspace Reality
2018
An existing introduction to engineering and design course at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering for first-year students was adapted to include guidance for first-year students to grow from early conceptual design to using the makerspace. A Rapid Assembly and Design (RAD) challenge embedded in NYU’s culture of invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship was created that allows students to work on their own unique project. Lab exercises, instructional videos, and project working space were developed to support the open-ended projects that required the use of the makerspace. An end-of-semester survey was conducted to see if the participants in the RAD project benefited from the makerspace training and if the projects improved their engineering design abilities. A timeline of events and descriptions of the training are documented for others to reproduce.
Learning in the Making: A Comparative Case Study of Three Makerspaces
Harvard Educational Review, 2014
Through a comparative case study, Sheridan and colleagues explore how makerspaces may function as learning environments. Drawing on field observations, interviews, and analysis of artifacts, videos, and other documents, the authors describe features of three makerspaces and how participants learn and develop through complex design and making practices. They describe how the makerspaces help individuals identify problems, build models, learn and apply skills, revise ideas, and share new knowledge with others. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of their findings for this emergent field.
Makerspace teaching-learning environment to enhance creative competence in engineering students
Engineers need creativity to achieve different solutions to the same problem. Creative competence has become a cross competence in engineering studies. In this research an educational activity with 44 engineering students from La Laguna University is designed for stimulating creative competence. The emergence of new teaching-learning environments, in which digital fabrication techniques are used to turn ideas into digital designs, and these into tangible products through 3D printing offer an opportunity for the development of creativity. The Abreaction Test of Creativity is used to measure the creativity value at the beginning and the end of the experiment, and a survey is conducted to know the students’ perception of the influence in the development of their creativity. The results show that activities with digital editing tools and three-dimensional printing are valid for the development of creative competence: participants who performed the activity improved their creativity ability in 24,04 points. The perception of students about the impact of these activities on their creativity is high, with values above 3.5 out of 5.