When we walk into a space, we ask and determine what we can do in that space: What is acceptable? What is allowable? What can happen here and what cannot? What should happen here? We scan the environment, which in its design/structure/furniture helps us produce inferences that allow us to come to provisional answers to […]

My idea is that learning can be described as a symbolic route, perhaps a journey. That we might start with a small learning experience that is fixed, relatively small. And from that particular learning experience, new worlds begin to open up and the mind of the learner becomes enlarged. And porosity is moving both ways—as […]

How do we, can we, make ‘spaces for making’ inclusive? How can inclusive relationships foster meaningful making? What makes one feel welcomed into or excluded from a particular space serving a particular community of learners? Can makerspaces feel inherently exclusive for students who are not in a particular disciplinary field or who do not look […]

We were interested in exploring the notion of “making” outside the traditional disciplinary realms for makerspaces. Then we began asking ourselves if—in fact—making is becoming a new way of being, of being in the world, recognizing that learning as making has the potential to transform human experience in the way that the spread of literacy […]

What does a live/make space look like? We are not talking about a live/work place, or a makerspace out in the world. We are asking what might a makerspace be like if you live and work in the same place? Our justification for this question is reflected in the list of items on our poster. […]

During the design phase of a makerspace, various stakeholders (e.g., students, faculty, administration, architects, vendors, etc.) develop a list of student learning outcomes. These are “drivers of success” that the built space and its associated affordances should foster. We call this Makerspace 1.0 — the first iteration of the space.

1. Thinking Metaphorically about Spaces for Learning 2. How Do We Disrupt the System? 3. Experience of the User Learner 4. The Yardstick: A New Metaphor for the Process of Planning 5. How Can Space Facilitate the Process of Making Knowledge? 6. Assessing How Spaces Enable Comfort and Belonging 7. Planning and Designing for Inclusivity […]

In 2013, the University of Arizona was one of only eight universities awarded a grant from the Association of American Universities for an AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Project. The overarching goal of the project at the University of Arizona was to shift the culture to one that embraces evidence-based, active learning strategies. An important component […]