Maker spaces are generally regarded as a valuable innovation in comparison to traditional education, although it is largely unclear what is exactly learned. This deficiency hampers the deployment of maker spaces, particularly their embedding and integration in the existing practice in formal education. In the work presented here, we explore the possibility of having learners self-report on their learning experience. For this purpose, we developed an easy-to-use visual tool for assessing learning of 21st Century Skills in children’s maker space activities, the Self-Evaluation Tool (SET). Particularly, we investigated the validation of the SET for the self-evaluation of learning activities in the maker space and how children evaluate their own performance in the various domains. The results show higher scores on learning goals in subjectification and lower scores for socialization. Future research will focus on a comparison of the different types of maker programs.
Learning activities in a makerspace are hands-on and characterized by design and inquiry. Evaluation is needed both for learners and their coaches in order to effectively guide the learning process of the children and for feedback on the effectiveness of the after-school maker activities. Due to its constructionist nature, learning in a makerspace requires specific forms of evaluation. In this paper we describe the development of an instrument that facilitates and captures reflection on the activities that children undertook in a library makerspace. Our aim is to capture learning in this context with multiple instruments: analysis of the artifacts that are made, observation of hands-on activities and interviews - which all are time consuming methods. Hence, we developed an easy to use tool for self-evaluation of maker learner activities for children. We build on the design of a visual instrument used for learning by design and inquiry in primary education. The findings and results are transferable to (formative) assessment and evaluation of learning activities by learners in other types of education and specific in maker education.
The learning innovation we report in this article is an international rapid-prototyping event (48 hours) in which teams of international BSc and MSc students from two universities (Western Europe and South-East Africa, respectively) jointly designed and developed a prototype for a local small-business owner in a developing economy. The learning innovation has its origin in the simple observation that the majority of the current theories, cases, and learning activities that characterize entrepreneurship education have their origin in western-oriented epistemologies and ontologies. The goal of this entrepreneurial learning activity was to develop students’ entrepreneurial competencies through interaction and cross-boundary entrepreneurial problem-solving between university students from western and non-western origin. The results underpin that it is very worthwhile for higher education teachers—who look for new, cost-effective “wide” entrepreneurship education programs—to adopt such events. The results show that the program not only contributes to short-term impact (e.g., joy of learning and collaborating, confidence in the own expertise, and seeing where to contribute) but also enables longer term impact (e.g., moving from intention to an actual start-up). Moreover, the activity produces actual solutions that, in this case the cheese maker can implement, can help the business to grow and survive.
