Flipping the Makerspace to Maximize Active Learning Time in Introduct…

, Educational Technologist & Systems Administrator, McPherson Library at University of Victoria

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Good Afternoon, my name is Rich McCue, and I manage the makerspace in the University of Victoria Library, and am going to talk about some research we did around flipping or blending the instruction for makerspace workshops.

With flipped or blended workshop, students typically review most of the instruction before attending the workshop, using videos and exercises to begin to learn new concepts and skills.
This is done in order to devote more face-to-face workshop time to hands-on activities.
The instructor is then available to assist students who need help as they work on hands-on exercises during the workshop.

In our experience moving most of the “lecture” or “instruction” out of face-to-face time in the Makerspace typically turns a 90 minute workshops into 60 minute workshops.
This either frees up more time for individual users to access the makerspace resources, or frees up time for additional workshops depending on the priorities of the makerspace.

How Do Students Feel About Flipped Makerspace Workshops?

To help guide our inquiry we created three Research Questions:
What are student satisfaction levels for flipped makerspace workshops?
Do students value being able to work at their own pace?
Would students prefer peer tutoring over flipped workshops?
We then used a combination of a survey and informal conversations with students to explore each research question.

Just to give you a bit of background before I dive into the result of our research,
We opened our makerspace in April 2017 and it is a “Community + Machine Space”, sometimes called a “Makerspace Lite” by engineering students on campus.

We make available a range of tools for our campus community, including:
3D printers,
Arduino & Raspberry Pi Kits...

MacBook Pro laptops, including Adobe Suite
360-video cameras,
DSLR cameras & tripods,
A Green Screen room

We have started by offering introductory workshops to our university community on topics including:
3D Design with Tinkercad
3D Printing
Arduino
Data Visualization
Nonlinear stories with TWINE
And we are adding a new workshop a month to round out our offerings.

We’ve had over 400 participants in 36 workshop since May.
Our post-workshop survey was introduced mid way through the summer.
We had a participation rate of 29% out of a population of 148 with a margin of error of 11%.

Interestingly 55% of all participants were women. This is just inside the margin of error for the sample.
It may be that the high level of staff participation over the summer may explain this.
We’ll see if this trend continues into the fall.

RQ1: What are student satisfaction levels for introductory makerspace workshops taught using a flipped, active learning teaching method?
About 70% prefer or strongly prefer hands-on activities during workshops.
30% are neutral & no students preferred less hands-on time in workshops.
One student summed up many student’s feelings by saying: “having instructors there to answer little questions as they come up as you're working through a project is very helpful.”

It’s interesting to look at the breakdown of the same question by Students, Staff & Faculty.
Note that faculty members and library staff tend to put more value in face-to-face group instruction more than students.
I suspect that part of the reason for this is that many faculty member’s did not complete the “pre-work” videos for the workshop…

RQ2: Do students value being able to work at their own pace?
100% of students either agreed or strongly agreed to this.
One student said, “I liked the tutorial sheets that walked you through simple projects, and it was nice working along at your own pace and having the instructor there if you had questions.”

RQ3: Would students prefer peer tutoring over a flipped workshop to be introduced to a new technology?
90% of responding students signaled a preference for the workshop over a peer-to-peer format.
While no student stated why they prefer workshops, the fact that they attended an introductory workshop may indicate that they were interested in the topic/technology but were unsure where to start or what questions to ask.
Sample bias might also be a factor considering that students who prefer peer-to-peer mentoring may be less likely to take a workshop and complete the survey.

So in conclusion...

The overriding goals when we create introductory makerspace workshops were to:
Make face-to-face workshop time as active as possible.
Minimize the impact of workshops on other makerspace users.

While giving students the ability to choose what hands-on exercises they would like to practice their new skills on, and
proceed at their own pace whether that be faster or slower.
Based on the generally positive survey responses, it appears that so far those goals have been largely achieved.

While this study points to the promising nature of using a flipped, active learning teaching method, larger sample sizes are required to effectively explore the difference in perceptions between students from different faculties on campus, especially engineering.
In addition, surveys, qualitative interviews or focus groups of experienced makerspace users should be used to explore questions raised by the survey. For example, do more experienced makers prefer peer-to-peer support more than workshops?

Thank-you for your time today. Are there any comments or questions?

Flipping the Makerspace to Maximize Active Learning Time in Introductory Workshops

Rich McCue

Flipping the Makerspace to Maximize Active Learning Time in Introductory Workshops