RAPID: Learning in the Making: Leveraging Technologies for Impact

批判和作品集创作的实践对于成功地从设计和制作中学习至关重要。批评包括仔细描述一个人的工作的属性，分析属性如何一起工作，设想其他可能的方法和解决方案，评估已经做了什么，下一步要采取什么，并将这些想法传达给观众。批判实践允许学习者建立一系列连续的心理表征，包括技术专长和内容理解。这些表征，反过来，让学习者发展元表征能力-知道何时调用表征工具来解决给定的问题在给定的时间的能力。在这一网络学习和未来学习技术快速项目中，参与者正在开发、测试和传播一种在线评论和组合工具，以促进参与创客空间的年轻人的学习，并研究这种支持对参与者学习的影响。他们正在调整现有的批评和投资组合工具，这些工具已经在更正式的学习环境中使用，用于制造商空间和初中和高中年龄的学习者。RAPID的资金使PI能够及时改进工具，供年轻人在创客空间中使用，以便大约300名导师在2014年夏季将软件的使用整合到100至200个创客空间中。对参与者在2014年夏季学习的分析将增加我们对如何在设计和制作时支持学习的理解，并将为后续改进评论和投资组合工具提供信息。虽然当前大部分关于通过制作学习的文献都集中在制作的工程方面，但PI认为成功的制作处于艺术、工程和创业的交叉点，最成功和最投入的学习者将是那些同时接触这三个领域的人，以及那些可以帮助他们以专家的方式进行设计，制作和反思的专家。创客空间通常很难拥有必要的专业知识，以始终在现场促进这种做法。PI正在开发网络支持的解决方案，同时应对这两个挑战：让年轻制造商参与有意义的批评实践，并让他们在不需要面对面接触的情况下接触专家和专家实践。拟议的项目是使这些解决方案很容易出口到美国各地的非正式学习环境，这是一个学习通过制作的方法，他们的工作与年轻人。

The practices of critique and portfolio creation are crucial to successful learning from design and making. Critique involves carefully describing the properties of one's work, analyzing how the properties function together, envisioning other possible approaches and solutions, evaluating what has been done and which next steps to take, and communicating these ideas to an audience. Critique practices allow a learner to build a series of successive mental representations that include both technical expertise and content understanding. These representations, in turn, allow learners to develop meta-representational competence -- the ability to know when to invoke representational tools to solve a given problem at a given time. In this Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies RAPID project, the PIs are developing, testing, and disseminating an on-line critique and portfolio tool to foster learning among young people participating in maker spaces and studying the effects of such support on participants' learning. They are adapting existing critique and portfolio tools that have been used in more formal learning environments for use in maker spaces and by middle school and high school age learners. RAPID funding is allowing the PIs to refine the tools for use by youngsters in maker spaces in time for some 300 mentors to integrate use of the software into between 100 and 200 maker spaces during Summer, 2014. Analysis of participants' learning during Summer, 2014, will both add to our understanding of how to support learning while designing and making and will inform subsequent refinement of the critique and portfolio tools.While much of the current literature on learning through making has focused on the engineering aspects of making, the PIs argue that successful making sits at the intersection of the arts, engineering, and entrepreneurship, and that the most successful and engaged learners will be those who are given access to all three of these fields together and to experts who can help them practice designing, making, and reflection in the ways they are done by experts. It is generally difficult for maker spaces to have the necessary expertise to foster such practices available on site all the time. The PIs are developing cyber-enabled solutions to both challenges simultaneously: to engage young makers in meaningful critique practices and to give them access to experts and expert practices without requiring face-to-face contact. The proposed project is making these solutions easily exportable to informal learning environments across the United States that are bringing a learning-through-making approach to their work with young people.