Connected Spaces Framework: Supporting Distributed Informal Makerspaces

• In Event: Roundtable Session 31
  In Roundtable Session: Technologies for Making, Makerspaces, and Makers: An Interactive Symposium

Abstract

Among the diversity of venues popping up that promote “making,” museums and libraries, with their long established histories as leaders in participatory learning and development of multiple complementary literacies, are particularly ideal centers for hosting successful makerspaces (Colegrove, 2013; IMLS, 2012; Sheridan et al., 2014).

Makerspaces offer unique opportunities for supporting novices and experts in working side-by-side, assisting one another, and continually shifting roles throughout the processes of investigation and invention (Vossoughi & Bevan, 2014; Hynes, 2012) in ways that resonate with Vygotsy’s Zones of Proximal Development (1978), Lave and Wenger’s Communities of Practice (COP - 1991) and Papert’s Constuctionism (Hira et al., 2014). In informal learning spaces however, where attendance, learning trajectories, and projects undertaken are often more varied and diverse than in formal learning settings, knowing which members of the community are experts in what skills is a persistent challenge. This makes it particularly difficult for participants to know which of their peers to reach out to when they require help. Similarly, facilitators may not have a full picture of each participants’ spectrum of “making expertise” (especially in cases where participants may be able to attend multiple distributed makerspaces).

In our work with a network of public library makerspaces, in which participants are free to take part at multiple locations, there is an additional challenge of supporting students in developing a sense of community. Within such networks, it is not uncommon for multiple makerspaces to be active simultaneously (e.g., afterschool programs), and yet the inability for participants to be aware of the distributed nature of their community creates barriers for understanding the presence of the larger community, and more importantly, opportunities to engage in it.

In response, we have developed the Connected Spaces Framework (CSF). CSF is a lightweight technology framework that logs an individual participant’s presence (using either RFID or Bluetooth) in any makerspace within a network of makerspaces and tracks their current making activity as well as the growth of their personal learning trajectories and “maker skills” acquisition.

In each makerspace, a large ambient dashboard shows the nicknames of all the makers currently present, their current activities, and any skills in which they have gained “proficiency”. The dashboard also shows all other currently connected and active makerspaces and their participants’ nicknames, activities, and proficiencies (Figure 1). By providing this information CSF attempts to answer the two main challenges described above: 1) Giving participants insight into the skills of their peers to help know who to reach out to when they need help with a specific maker-skill related problem (e.g., 3D Printing) and; 2) Giving them a sense of the broader making community of which they take part.

CSF also works to support distributed engagement and collaboration across makerspaces by embedding a lightweight video chat portal in each dashboard, which can be turned on to connect makerspaces together for real-time collaboration.
As part of this symposium, we will discuss our findings from the deployment of CSF at a series of 3-day summer “maker camps” than ran simultaneously in libraries across a mid-sized Midwestern city.

Authors

• Mike Tissenbaum, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Dennis Ramirez, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Erica Rosenfeld Halverson, University of Wisconsin - Madison