The Maker Movement has taken the educational field by storm due to its perceived potential as a driver of creativity, excitement, and innovation (Honey & Kanter, ; Martinez & Stager, ). Making is promoted as advancing entrepreneurship, developing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce, and supporting compelling inquiry‐based learning experiences for young people. In this paper, we focus on making as an educative inquiry‐based practice, and specifically tinkering as a branch of making that emphasizes creative, improvisational problem solving. STEM‐rich tinkering activities are designed to support interdisciplinary investigations and creativity using a STEM‐rich palette of tools, concepts, and phenomena. To date, the majority of research on making has focused on analysis of makerspaces, maker communities, and design and implementation of maker activities. In this paper, we describe a study that documented dimensions of learning in tinkering programs designed for museum visitors. The study, which was jointly negotiated among a team of researchers and practitioners, led to the development of a Tinkering Learning Dimensions Framework and a publicly available video library of tinkering exemplars, both of which are being actively used by tinkering practitioners in their direct service to the public and professional development work for the field.

ABSTRACT:We describe a study of programs to deepen families' scientiÞc inquiry practices in a science museum setting. The programs incorporated research-based learning principles from formal and informal educational environments. In a randomized experimental design, two versions of the programs, called inquiry games, were compared to two control conditions. Inquiry behaviors were videotaped and compared at pretest and posttest exhibits. Family members were also interviewed about their perceptions and use of the inquiry games. Results indicated that visitors who learned the inquiry games improved their inquiry more than those who did not. Effect sizes ranged from 0.3σ to 0.7σ , depending on the assessment measure. Visitors who learned the collaborative inquiry game showed even more improvement than those who learned the individualized game, spending more time investigating the posttest exhibit, making more frequent and more abstract interpretations of their experiments, building more collaborative explanations, and engaging in more coherent inquiry investigations than controls. Qualitative analysis suggested that the collaborative inquiry game was superior because it required all family members to participate, work

As tinkering and making spaces proliferate in museums, many researchers, practitioners, funders, and policy-makers seek to understand what constitutes learning-through-tinkering. To support discussion of tinkering-based learning, the Exploratorium sought to articulate and refine a valid, evidence-based definition of learning in its permanent on-floor Tinkering Studio. We studied and made videos of fifty learners and their companions in one of three tinkering activities in the Tinkering Studio. A team of researchers and practitioners used the videos to refine frameworks for learning and facilitation (initially developed in a prior project), leading to the identification of four Dimensions of Learning and three broad Facilitation Moves. We created a Tinkering Library of Exemplars that categorizes over one hundred video clips according to these frameworks. The Library may help articulate important aspects of learning and facilitation, give voice to practitioners' values in defining learning-through-tinkering, and lay a methodological foundation for gathering evidence for such learning.

Interactive museum exhibits are ubiquitous in science centers, and are becoming increasingly popular in art, history and cultural museums. At an interactive exhibit, visitors can act on the exhibit and the exhibit reacts. While there is much theoretical and empirical support for the idea that interactive features promote science learning, we believe that serious design problems can arise if an uncritical “more is better” approach is taken to interactivity. This article describes five common pitfalls of designing exhibits with high levels of interactivity or multiple interactive features: 1) multiple options with equal salience, 2) features allowing multiple users to interfere with one another, 3) options that encourage users to disrupt the phenomenon being displayed, 4) features that make the critical phenomenon difficult to find, and 5) secondary features that obscure the primary feature. Examples of each of the five problems are presented, and possible design solutions are offered.

The ChemLinks Coalition and the Modular Chemistry Consortium, based at Beloit College and the University of California-Berkeley, respectively, are now in their third year of collaboration to develop and test topical modules for the first two years of the college chemistry curriculum. This report describes our implementation of a modular approach and some of the active learning strategies it employs, plans for evaluating the effectiveness of this approach, and plans for disseminating it broadly within the undergraduate chemistry community. An Example of the ApproachEach 3-5-week module is based on an important, but general, question that is the centerpiece of the module: Why does the ozone hole form in the Antarctic spring? How can we drive the reactions of integrated circuit design? How can we make our water safe to drink? As students develop the chemistry needed to answer such questions, they model how chemistry is actually done and discover connections between chemistry, other sciences, technology, and society. In order to develop critical thinking skills as well as cover chemical content, the modules feature student-centered active and collaborative classroom activities and inquiry-based laboratory projects, rather than relying primarily on traditional lectures, examinations, and verification laboratories. This approach is based on research showing that students learn best when they can build on past experience, relate what they are learning to things relevant to them, have direct "hands-on" experience, construct their own knowledge in collaboration with other students and faculty, and communicate their results effectively.To illustrate our approach, we will use the module "What should we do about global warming?" by Sharon Anthony and Tom Brauch from Beloit College. This module, which is currently being tested by 650 students in 7 institutions, is intended to be used during the first three or four weeks of a general chemistry course to introduce dimensional analysis and unit conversion, significant figures, balancing chemical equations, stoichiometry, Lewis dot structures, and VSEPR theory. In addition, this module develops data analysis, problem-solving, and written communication skills.The opening session in every module introduces a larger question that students generally find interesting because of its personal or societal relevance. We involve the students by finding out what they already know about the question and getting them to suggest some approaches to answering itidentifying promising subquestions they will need to answer during the next few weeks. In this case, students often have some prior knowledge of greenhouse gases and global warming from the news media or from high school classes, so many of them can contribute what they already know, and the instructor can assess the range of backgrounds in the class. Using a short video and articles that are supplied by the instructor or by the students themselves, small groups are asked to identify scientific arguments that support and oppose the propos...