Leveraging prototypes to Support Self-directed Social learning in Makerspaces

Leveraging prototypes to Support Self-directed Social learning in Makerspaces

Jaśkiewicz, T.J. (TU Delft Design Conceptualization and Communication)
Mulder, I. (TU Delft Design Conceptualization and Communication)
Verburg, Samuel (Student TU Delft)
Verheij, Bob (Student TU Delft)

Bohemia, E. (editor)
Kovacevic, A. (editor)
Buck, L. (editor)
Childs, P. (editor)
Green, S. (editor)
Hall, A. (editor)
Dasan, A. (editor)

2018

The “Maker Movement” signifies emergence of a cultural model of a society where anyone can become a creative maker. As part of this movement, various kinds of “Makerspaces” provide physical and social infrastructures that help unleash people’s intrinsic abilities to make, create, and innovate. In this way, makerspaces become loci where maker communities develop as communities of interest and communities of practice. In such communities, participants acquire skills and knowledge through selfdirected peer-learning and learning-by-doing, while leveraging each other’s practical expertise, individual motivations and enthusiasm. The presented work elaborates upon how maker communities
within academic design engineering education and everyday-life contexts could better support their participants’ self-directed learning. Throughout two independent researches through design case studies, we investigated how these learning processes could be improved. Both cases involved the iterative development and assessment of service platforms for supporting the social learning processes of makers. One platform focused on documenting and sharing skills of makers, the other on documenting and sharing the making processes leading to a given artefact. Reflecting on the two platforms revealed two distinct aspects of encountered learning. The first aspect involves deepening
and mutually encouraging development of individual expert skills. The second aspect involves multidisciplinary alignment during collaborations and peer-learning within a maker community, performed in teams encompassing complementary skills. The lessons learnt lead to proposing a conceptual framework, which aims to provide a support structure to improve self-directed social learning processes in makerspaces.

Learning-by-Making
Makerspaces
Peer-learning
Prototyping
Research-through-Design

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:7cc16226-c6e5-4b4a-8e78-9f767013d37e

The Design Society

978-1-912254-02-6

DS 93: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE 2018)

E&PDE 2018, 2018-09-06 → 2018-09-07, London, United Kingdom

E&PDE

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2018 T.J. Jaśkiewicz, I. Mulder, Samuel Verburg, Bob Verheij