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

创客空间是一种协作和开放的工作环境，在大学校园里越来越受欢迎。当学生在创客空间工作时，他们会遍历并整合各种技能，从而在学习过程、创造性探索和专业知识获取之间建立动态关系。这项工作对学习和专业知识之间的相互作用进行了初步研究。它开始回答学生在大学创客空间学习什么以及如何学习的问题。目前，尚不清楚大学生在大学创客空间中实际学到了什么，以及与其他实践学习机会（如竞赛团队项目，本科研究或类似经验）相比如何。教育工作者希望创客空间是有效的学习环境，可以1）提高终身和自我导向的学习技能，2）扩展工程课程，3）激励，同时教育下一代STEM学生。然而，关于创客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，在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都比较了新手和专家，但没有详细说明一个人如何从新手转变为专家，也没有详细说明这种转变如何影响该领域内的创造力。大多数专门知识研究都是比较研究，或者只是在某些时间点对群体进行简单的概括。这些研究忽视了专门知识的发展。在创客空间中，学生往往会受到一个创意项目的激励，从而发展专业知识并进行学习。这种发生在创客空间的学习是自然的、有机的、不受控制的。这项对创客空间的研究将研究这些自然发生的现象，而不是改变环境以符合典型的受控实验。这种方法使我们能够研究两个不同校园中的工程制造者的成熟和发展。这项研究将集中在两所不同大学的两个非常不同的创客空间。这两个空间都有许多常见的制作设备（例如，3D打印机、电子设备、木材和金属加工设备等），但每一个都有自己独特的文化和在各自大学的课程安排。 此外，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创客空间，将使用以下方法程序：1）制作活动中的民族志观察，以及2）对在工程创客空间中制作的学生团体和学生个人的观察和采访。这项工作也被设想为未来研究的跳板，了解创客空间，包括创客空间文化，进入的障碍和途径，空间中产生的紧张局势，学生设计过程，创新方法和协作努力。

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.