Reimagining Systems for Learning Hands-on Creative and Maker Skills
We asked our attendees that with respect to the building of learning systems for creative and hands-on maker skills...
... what are they most excited about?
The opportunity for children to see the breadth of expression in computing
I think because of the creative nature of these learning experiences, they have the potential to be a more equitable introduction to STEM for youth.
Enhancing accessibility for underserved and underrepresented communities in ways that can empower young students to engage in creative and expressive fields.
Enabling more people to achieve more, and lowering the entry barrier to making for newcomers
I am most excited about how these learning systems might be able to collaborate with human teachers/coaches, and help them to do a better job to support learners in acquiring these skills.
I believe these systems are kind of a trojan horse. Their educational nature is what gets us through the door at schools. However, perhaps the more significant outcome is the relationships that we build with the learners.
When I ask myself about my values, it is to find more ways to support other people's creativity. I see this area as a platform to do this.
Opportunities to level the digital divide and open access to students in disadvantaged areas.
To hear where other people see opportunities to facilitate hardware prototyping and sketching.
Participatory research design, Designing technology from a critical lens
I'm excited about how physical objects and their functionality are represented in code.
I am most excited that our work has potential to bring more people into the computational space that I love.
I am most interested in how to leverage technologies to support remote teaching and learning of hands-on skills
I'm excited about how we can provide platform that make making and electronics accessible for everyone.
Working across multiple disciplines.
Engaging with a wide range of future users to explore and understand their needs, context, and use-cases.
I am interested in the ways in which we can think about representation and interventions needed to increase participation, reducing barriers of access and understanding deeper issues that hinder engagement. Secondly, I am interested to explore how online or virtual communities can help in building support and social capital to bolster such initiatives.
designing for equitable and justice-centered learning across facilitation, activity design and tools, materials and equipment - going beyond strategies to think about systems for changing how people interact and imagine in maker-oriented learning
I have been following and being part of these issues for over 15 years. It's not so much technological innovations that fascinate me, but the growing number of enthusiastic people who are driving development.
I would love to talk about how we can make makerspaces and making accessible. Makerspaces are a great place for DIY accessibility technology which can be really empowering. But there are so many aspects of 'making' that are inaccessible, and I'd love to discuss ways we can co-create access in maker spaces.
How we can best design learning systems to support all learners, including learners with disabilities and learners who have been historically marginalized when it comes to STEAM fields.
Compared to software-based learning environments and contexts, physical interfaces and hands-on environments can be more intuitive and help drive active learning. While most of my recent projects are software exclusive, I'd like to see how this difference could make these interfaces more powerful.
Learning to draw!
How to include people with disabilities in making.
... what are the biggest challenges?
genuinely designing with and for students
I think preparing educators to support youth in these spaces is a challenge because of the tension between the "known" formal education system and the informal education space.
Finding appropriate participant pools to systematically evaluate prototypes that support learning maker skills.
Incorporating the culture and values of all diverse stakeholders in the design of Maker Spaces.
Designing systems that properly fit with the cultural and financial realities of different communities.
the breadth of the field of making - there are many different skills needed ranging from design to controlling the machines to assembly - and it's hard to tackle every single aspect as there are oftentimes multiple valid ways to reach the same goal.
I think one of the biggest challenge is to ensure equitable participation and engagement from underrepresented learners when learning these skills. Often times, underrepresented learners, even though they have access to opportunities like maker space, participate and engage less compared to peers who are white and male. Human instructors and coaches are the best at understanding the nuances behind a learner's lack of engagement and supporting the learner. We really need to think about how can technology support the instructors rather than replace them.
Developing sustained partnerships with schools and other organizations is hard. Educators are in a constant state of crunch. Short-term outreach programs are easy but don't have a significant impact.
Sharing of information from one maker space to another.
Teaching students the concept of a prototype, "looks-like feels-like" to demonstrate an idea.
To find a good balance between the complexity of electronic systems and their simplified and understandable abstractions.
I think collaboration can be a pretty big challenge in this research area since usually there is a disconnect with artists and technology.
Integrating the critical lens into the design
The tools are bad
Convincing people that computation and technology is for them.
The scalability of current methods for teaching hands-on skills is rather limited.
Creating one-size-fits-all solutions for persons who are inexperienced with making. Persons are very individual in their background and suiting maker learning material to the individual is one of the biggest challenges.
Targeting technology to various level of learners. Systems are too often built only for novices in mind.
Society-scale challenges, which are related to engineering education, and how (and to what extent) to embed it into school curricula across different age groups.
Understanding the values needed to be codified in these systems, which again can become a representation issue around whose voices get heard and why to ensure equitable participation.
Quickly changing technology that makes it difficult for pedagogy and capacity to grow alongside tools; balancing cost, power and ease of technology with concerns about privacy, social costs, and learner/designer agency; knowledge, experience and priority differences between designers and researchers and educators in classrooms and community spaces;
age-appropriate user interfaces
In learning making skills, so often it is assumed the maker is an able-bodied person. Making 'making' accessible means addressing all parts of the workflow-- it doesn't matter if the 3D printer gives an accessible output if the CAD software and the trainings to use the 3D printer are inaccessible. We need to better embed accessibility considerations in the technologies used in maker spaces, and we need 'learning' to become accessible.
Showcasing/Illustrating the benefits for all learners, and especially how it can support general academic learning.
I would say accessibility, i.e., how easy it is for one to access such systems that usually require a shop space and expensive equipment. I think it might be increasingly important when we are doing things remotely now. How can we leverage at-home stuff and make things more affordable?
The biggest challenge is the requirement for physical co-presence.
Built in assumptions about abilities