Collaborative Research: Identifying the Interplay of Expertise Development, Creativity, and Learning in University Makerspaces

Makerspace是一种协作和开放的工作环境，在大学校园里正变得越来越流行。当学生在创客空间工作时，他们遍历并整合了各种技能，这些技能在学习过程、创造性探索和专业知识获得之间创造了一种动态的关系。这项工作提供了学习和专业知识之间的相互作用的初步检验。它开始回答学生在大学创作空间中学习什么以及如何学习的问题。目前，还不清楚大学生在大学制作空间中真正学到了什么，以及这与其他实践学习机会(如竞赛团队项目、本科研究或类似经历)相比有何不同。教育工作者希望MakerSpace是有效的学习环境，能够1)提高终身和自我指导的学习技能，2)扩展工程课程，3)在同时教育下一代STEM学生的同时激发动力。然而，关于制造空间中专业知识和学习的发展及其对创造力的影响的研究很少，因为这些空间是复杂的、动态的、非标准的环境，当涉及到他们的研究时，会引发前所未有的挑战。此外，大多数关于专业知识和创造力的研究将新手和专家进行了比较，但未能详细说明一个人是如何从新手转变为专家的，也没有详细说明这种转变如何影响领域内的创造性能力。大多数对专业知识的研究都是比较研究，或者只是对特定时间点上的群体进行快照。这些研究忽视了专业知识的发展。在Makerspace中，学生经常受到一个想法的激励，做出一个创造性的项目，进而他们发展专业知识并进行学习。这种在创客空间中进行的学习是自然的、有机的和不受控制的。这项对makerspace的研究将在这些现象自然发生时对其进行检验，而不是改变环境以符合典型的对照实验。这一方法使我们能够研究随着工程制造者在两个不同的校园中成熟和发展而发生的演变。本研究将集中在两所不同大学的两个非常不同的制造者空间。这两个空间都有许多常见的制造设备(例如3D打印机、电子设备、木材和金属加工设备等)，但每个空间都有自己独特的文化和在各自大学的课程中的位置。此外，两所大学之间的差异创造了一个独特的比较机会。为了研究这两所大学的制造空间，将使用以下方法：1)在活动中进行人种学观察，2)观察和访谈正在制造工程制造空间的学生群体和个人。这项工作也被视为未来研究创客空间的跳板，包括创客空间文化、进入障碍和途径、空间中产生的紧张局势、学生设计过程、创新方法和合作努力。

Makerspaces are collaborative and open work environments which are becoming increasingly popular on university campuses. As students work in makerspaces they traverse and integrate a wide variety of skills that create a dynamic relationship between the learning processes, creative exploration, and expertise acquisition. This work provides an initial examination of this interplay between learning and expertise. It begins to answer the question of what and how students learn in university makerspaces. At present, it is unclear what university students actually learn in university makerspaces and how this compares with other hands-on learning opportunities such as competition team projects, undergraduate research, or similar experiences. Educators hope makerspaces are effective learning environments that can 1) enhance lifelong and self-directed learning skills, 2) expand engineering curricula, and 3) motivate while simultaneously educating the next generation of STEM students. However, there are few studies on the development of expertise and learning or their impact on creativity in makerspaces because these spaces are complex, dynamic, non-standard environments that provoke unprecedented challenges when it comes to their study. In addition, most work on expertise and creativity compares novices and experts but fails to create detailed accounts of how one moves from novice to expert nor how this transition influences the ability to be creative within the domain. Most studies of expertise are comparison studies or simply snapshot of groups at certain points in time. These studies overlook the development of expertise. In makerspaces, students are often motivated by an idea to make a creative project, and in turn they thereby develop expertise and undergo learning. This learning that takes place in makerspaces is natural, organic, and uncontrolled. This study of makerspaces will examine these phenomena as they naturally occur, rather than altering the environment to conform to a typical controlled experiment. This approach enables the study of the evolution of making as engineering makers mature and evolve on two different campuses.This study will focus on two very different makerspaces at two different universities. Both spaces feature many of the commonly found making equipment (e.g., 3D printers, electronics equipment, wood and metal working equipment, etc.), but each has its own unique culture and placement into the programs at their respective universities. Further, the differences between the universities create a unique opportunity for comparison. To study the makerspaces at these two universities, the following methodological procedures will be used: 1) ethnographic observation in making activities, and 2) observations and interviews with student groups and individual students who are making in the engineering makerspaces. This work is also envisioned as a springboard for future studies in understanding makerspaces including makerspace culture, barriers and pathways to entry, tensions produced in the space, student design processes, innovative approaches, and collaborative efforts.