EXP: Learning in the Making: Studying and Designing Makerspaces

该项目采用民族志和基于设计的方法来了解人们如何以及如何从参与创客空间中学习，并探索可以利用这些环境来更好地促进学习的特征。创客空间是人们（通常是家庭）聚在一起制作东西的物理场所。一些参与者在设计、构建和迭代改进工作设备时学习了大量的STEM内容和实践。然而，其他人只是采取试错的方法。研究探讨了这些空间促进学习的启示，以及如何将技术融入这些空间，使它们从学习发生但不一致的创客空间转变为学习是参与的一致结果的环境。目的之一是学习如何有效地设计这样的空间，以便鼓励和帮助参与者成为有意的，反思的制造者，而不仅仅是修补匠。研究还将推进关于有效工作室教学和学习的已知内容，并推进对如何支持青年的理解，以帮助他们成为有能力，有创造力和反思性的技术生产者。该项目建立在工作室思维框架和什么是已知的元表征能力的发展。这些框架的基础是在Lave和Wessels社区的实践和罗格夫的，史蒂文斯等人。和Jenkins et al.关于围绕生产的社交网络的参与性文化的进一步工作。我们采取社会文化的方法，试图理解空间，参与者和技术之间的关系，因为参与者设定并努力实现目标。让更多的年轻人参与科学和技术思维和学习，并扩大在STEM工作场所的参与是国家的当务之急。解决这些问题的一种方法是激发年轻人的热情，帮助他们认识到STEM内容和实践在实现个人目标方面所发挥的作用。创客空间是在许多城市地区兴起的邻里空间，它允许并促进使用真实的材料（有时是相当复杂的材料）进行修补、设计和建造。参与设计并成功地在这些空间中建造工作设备可以促进STEM学习，解决问题的能力的信心和能力，以及对工程，科学和数学（以及其他）的积极态度。这个项目的目标是学习如何设计这些空间，并整合学习技术，使学习更一致地发生（沿着修补和制作），特别是使他们能够访问和邀请那些通常不会参与这些空间的人。该项目的工作是在城市环境中进行的，对象是处境危险的儿童，正在作出特别努力，以适应与同龄人一起学习和制作的需要。与计算机俱乐部一样，创客空间有可能让参与者识别他们感兴趣的内容，同时他们的参与让他们有机会表达自己，学习STEM内容并将其付诸使用。

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.