This EAGER project sought to generate early knowledge for the museum field about the capabilities and limitations of an Indoor Positioning System to: 1) automate the collection of visitor movement data for museum research, and 2) enable location-aware applications designed to support museum visitor learning. Working with Qualcomm, Inc., the Exploratorium installed and experimented with an early prototype of a whole-museum, WiFi-based IPS that acquired and processed timestamped location data (latitude/longitude) from mobile test devices, similar to cell phones. The project 1) defined IPS ground
As part of an overall strategy to enhance learning within maker contexts in formal and informal environments, the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) and Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) programs partnered to support innovative models for making in a variety of settings through the Enabling the Future of Making to Catalyze New Approaches in STEM Learning and Innovation Dear Colleague Letter. This Early Concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) will test an innovative approach to bringing making from primarily informal out-of-school contexts into formal science classrooms. While the literature base to support the positive outcomes and impacts of design-based making in informal settings at the K-12 level is emerging, to date, minimal studies have investigated the impacts of making design principles within formal contexts. If successful, this project would not only add to this gap in the literature base but would also present a novel model for bridging the successful engineering design practices of making and tinkering primarily found in informal science education into formal science education classrooms. The model would also demonstrate an innovative, highly interactive way to engage high school students and their teachers in engineering based design principles with immediate real-world applications, as the scientific instruments developed in this project could be integrated directly into science classrooms at relatively minimal costs.
Through a multi-phased design and implementation model, high school students and their teachers will engage deeply in making design principles through the design and development of their own scientific instruments using Arduino-compatible hardware and software. The first phase of the project will reflect a more traditional making experience with up to twenty high school students and their teachers participating in an after-school design making club, in this case, focused on the development and testing of scientific instrument prototypes. During the second phase of the project, the first effort to transpose the after school making experience to a more formalized experience will be tested with up to eight students selected to participate in two week summer research internships focused on scientific instrument design and development through making at Northwestern University. A two-day summer teacher workshop will also be held for high school teachers participating in the subsequent pilot study. The collective insights gleaned from the after school program, student internships, and teacher workshop will culminate to inform the full implementation of the formal classroom pilot study. The third and final phase will coalesce months of iterative, formative research, design and development, resulting in a comprehensive pilot investigation in up to seven high school physics classrooms.
Using a multi-phased, mixed methods exploratory design-based research approach, this 18-month EAGER will explore several salient research questions: (a) How and to what extent does the design & making of scientific instrumentation serve as useful tasks for learning important science and engineering knowledge, practices, and epistemologies? (b) How engaging is this making activity to learners of diverse abilities and prior interests? What can be generalized to other types of making activities? (c) How accessible is the Arduino hardware and coding environment to learners? What combination of hardware and software materials and tools best support accessibility and learning in this type of digital making activity? and (d) What types of scaffolding (for students and teachers) are required to support the effective use of maker materials and activities in a classroom setting? Structured interviews, artifacts, video recordings from visor cameras, student design logs, logfiles, and ethnographic field notes will be employed to garner data and address the research questions. Given the early stage of the proposed research, the dissemination of the findings will be limited to a few select journals, teacher forums and workshops, and professional conferences.
This EAGER is well-poised to directly impact up to 125 high school physics students (average= 25 students/class), approximately 7 high school physics teachers, 6-8 high school summer interns, nearly 20 high school students participating in the after-school design making club, and indirectly many more. The results of this EAGER could provide the basis and evidence needed to support a more robust, expanded future investigation to further substantiate the findings and build the case for similar efforts to bring making into formal science education contexts.
This project takes an ethnographic and design-based approach to understanding how and what people learn from participation in makerspaces and explores the features of those environments that can be leveraged to better promote learning. Makerspaces are physical locations where people (often families) get together to make things. Some participants learn substantial amounts of STEM content and practices as they design, build, and iteratively refine working devices. Others, however, simply take a trial and error approach. Research explores the affordances are of these spaces for promoting learning and how to integrate technology into these spaces so that they are transformed from being makerspaces where learning happens, but inconsistently, into environments where learning is a consistent outcome of participation. One aim is to learn how to effectively design such spaces so that participants are encouraged and helped to become intentional, reflective makers rather than simply tinkerers. Research will also advance what is known about effective studio teaching and learning and advance understanding of how to support youth to help them become competent, creative, and reflective producers with technology(s). The project builds on the Studio Thinking Framework and what is known about development of meta-representational competence. The foundations of these frameworks are in Lave and Wengers communities of practice and Rogoff's, Stevens et al.'s, and Jenkins et al.'s further work on participatory cultures for social networks that revolve around production. A sociocultural approach is taken that seeks to understand the relationships between space, participants, and technologies as participants set and work toward achieving goals. Engaging more of our young population in scientific and technological thinking and learning and broadening participation in the STEM workplace are national imperatives. One way to address these imperatives is to engage the passions of young people, helping them recognize the roles STEM content and practices play in achieving their own personal goals. Maker spaces are neighborhood spaces that are arising in many urban areas that allow and promote tinkering, designing, and construction using real materials, sometimes quite sophisticated ones. Participating in designing and successfully building working devices in such spaces can promote STEM learning, confidence and competence in one's ability to solve problems, and positive attitudes towards engineering, science, and math (among other things). The goal in this project is to learn how to design these spaces and integrate learning technologies so that learning happens more consistently (along with tinkering and making) and especially so that they are accessible and inviting to those who might not normally participate in these spaces. The work of this project is happening in an urban setting and with at-risk children, and a special effort is being made to accommodate making and learning with peers. As with Computer Clubhouses, maker spaces hold potential for their participants to identify what is interesting to them at the same time their participation gives them the opportunity to express themselves, learn STEM content, and put it to use.
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
In this essay, Erica Halverson and Kimberly Sheridan provide the context for research on the maker movement as they consider the emerging role of making in education. The authors describe the theoretical roots of the movement and draw connections to related research on formal and informal education. They present points of tension between making and formal education practices as they come into contact with one another, exploring whether the newness attributed to the maker movement is really all that new and reflecting on its potential pedagogical impacts on teaching and learning.
The Masters (MSc) in Science Communication at Dublin City University (Ireland) draws on expertise from several disciplines in human and physical sciences. The programme takes a broad view of communication that includes the various kinds of interaction between institutions of science and of society, as well as the diverse means of exchanging information and ideas. Nearly 200 students from a wide variety of backgrounds have completed the programme since its start in 1996, and they work in many different types of employment, from information and outreach services, to science centres, to
As Maker and Tinkering programs expand, educators are in need of new ways of noticing and capturing learning. In particular, because maker programs are so facilitation-heavy, and physically active, there is a need for ways for educators to monitor learning in situ. In this paper, Bevan, Gutwill, Petrich and Wilkinson explore how jointly negotiated research led to new insights about what counts as learning in the context of STEM-rich tinkering in ways that can support formative, embedded, and naturalistic assessments.
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. The project's goal is to demonstrate an educational model fully commensurate with the demands of the 21st Century workforce, and more specifically, with the emerging “green-tech” economy.
Integrating technology with reformed-based science instruction that facilitates student inquiry can be challenging for teachers. Campbell, Longhurst, Wang, Hsu, and Coster propose a professional development model that helps teachers use the latest technologies to engage students in authentic science practices.
How can technology be used to support inquiry in the classroom? In this study, Rehmat and Bailey probe the effects of a science methods course for preservice elementary teachers that explicitly includes technology integration. The preservice teachers in this course broadened their definition of classroom technology, increased their technology use, and gained a more positive outlook on technology integration.
The Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies Program funds efforts that support envisioning the future of learning technologies and advance what we know about how people learn in technology-rich environments. In this Cyberlearning EAGER project, the project team is developing foundations for using "paper mechatronics" as a learning technology. Paper mechatronics makes possible a craft-oriented approach to engineering and computing education that integrates key concepts from mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, control systems, and computer programming, while using paper as the primary material for learner design, exploration, and inquiry. In this approach, learners will design foldable paper components and assemblies; program motors, sensors and controls; test their ideas iteratively; and share their designs on a website. This paper-based modeling approach to learning concepts in and practices of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, control systems, and computer programming ultimately aims to make it possible for all learners to have exposure to and the opportunity to participate in creative engineering, design, and computer programming.
The approach to learning through designing and making through paper mechatronics is made possible by a convergence of many different technological factors -- the array of small computers, sensors, and actuators that are becoming available at low cost and a size that children can use; availability of a wide variety of manipulable conductive materials (threads, paints, fabrics); low-cost and precise desktop and laser cutters for paper and similar materials; a wide variety of novel paper-like materials; and new ways of interacting with the computer. The approach has its foundations in Papert's constructionism and in the current maker movement, but it has potential beyond constructionism itself, both in practice and with respect to what can potentially be learned about learning and development in in context of its use.
Hidden Universe is a multi-faceted project built around production of a 2D/3D giant screen film. The goal is to inspire, engage, and excite viewers about the mysterious worlds hidden around us and the science and technology that reveal them. The film will illuminate natural wonders that are invisible to the naked eye, such as objects and processes that are too slow, too fast, and too small to be seen without advanced technologies. It will include nanoscience and microbiology research and developing wavelength technologies such as ultrafast lasers. The project will employ cutting-edge