Introducing Making Into High School Science Classrooms: Exploring the Design Trade-Offs in Bridging the Formal-Informal Divide

• In Event: 66.031 - Promoting STEM Learning and Engagement Through Rich Technological Experiences

Abstract

‘Making’ is one way to improve students’ STEM outcomes (e.g., Blikstein, 2013) by engaging students in science and engineering practices (Koh & Abbas, 2015) and supporting the development of 21st Century Skills essential for STEM success (Martin, 2015). Although makerspaces are common in a variety of informal and out-of-school contexts, the maker movement has not been successful in involving a diverse audience. These activities are dominated by white men with resources to invest in the technology and materials and by students with prior experience in computation (TASCHA, 2012; AAUW, 2000). One way to broaden participation is to design making activities accessible to the range of different students (i.e., novice to experienced coders), and move these activities into the regular school day to be completed by all students.

In this study, we examined the feasibility and challenges associated with introducing making activities into high school physics classes. Using methodology and principles of design-based research (The Design-based Research Collective, 2003), we explored ways to bridge the divide between playful exploration of informal making activities and the structure of traditional schooling. Building on Resnick, Berg, and Eisenberg’s (2000) work showing that students feel a “strong sense of personal investment in a scientific investigation” when they develop their own instruments (p.7), we asked twelve students, with the help of a physics teacher, to design scientific instruments and the associated physics labs to be implemented into the physics curriculum. The scientific instruments were created using Arduino-based hardware and software.

To examine the process and the challenges associated with designing the instruments, both video data and ethnographic field notes were collected. Our observations suggest that implementing making activities into formal learning settings also has its own barriers to entry. When provided with open-ended Arduino equipment and no guidance as how to use it, characteristic of traditional makerspaces, the students struggled to learn how to use the instruments within the time constraints of an after-school program. Furthermore, students found using script-based Arduino programming language extremely difficult and lost interest in working with the equipment.

After observing students’ difficulties, we introduced equipment that was more technologically accessible. Makeblock produces Arduino-based, programmable robotic equipment. Kits provide instructions on how to build specified robots and use the associated sensors (e.g., motion sensor, accelerometer). The robots and sensors are programmed using a graphical programming medium modeled off of Scratch 2.0 (MIT). Consistent with Khanlari (2013), students expressed greater enthusiasm for working with these kits than with the prior maker-type equipment. Additionally, the graphical programming allowed for students who were programming novices to be involved with the technical side of designing the scientific instruments.

Our findings suggest that to successfully integrate making activities into high school classrooms, material and computational scaffolding is needed to allow students with differing levels of technological interests and experience to engage in the activities. Traditional maker equipment and activities lack the defined structure that students need to understand how to use the materials and scaffolding they need to work with the materials.

Authors

• Kinnari Atit, University of California Riverside

• Jue Wu, Northwestern University

• Grace Hall

• Kay Ellen Ramey, Northwestern University

• Mark Vondracek

• Kemi Jona

• David Henry Uttal, Northwestern University