Makerspaces in Libraries at U.S. Public Colleges and Universities: A Census

Melo, Marijel; Hirsh, Kimberly; March, Laura

doi:10.1353/pla.2023.0007

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Many makerspace scholars draw upon these other environments and prior work on informal and collaborative learning, e.g., constructionism, affinity spaces, and communities of practice (Halverson & Sheridan, 2014; Willett, 2016). A census of makerspaces in the U.S. revealed that 784 institutions (31% of state colleges and universities) had one or more makerspaces (Melo & Rabkin, 2019). The affordances of makerspaces include the diverse learning opportunities, creative expression, and cross collaborations (Einarsson & Hertzum, 2021).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other scholarly work on information practices in makerspaces also highlights productioncentered information behavior and learning (Koh, Abbas, & Willett, 2019), experimentation and/or iterative trial‐and‐error as prime sources of information (Einarsson & Hertzum, 2021; Li & Todd, 2016) and interpersonal resources (Li & Todd, 2016). Increasingly, makerspaces have been integrated into university ecosystems, most notably within libraries (Melo & Rabkin, 2019). However, despite the openness of makerspaces to users across disciplines, the excitement around making has been tempered by the lack of diverse user populations that engage or, let alone, enter the space (Britton, 2015; Lewis, 2015).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The impetus for this study emerges from the enduring issue of the underrepresentation of diverse user populations within informal learning environments such as makerspaces (Britton, 2015; Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2018). While this issue has been researched in other fields such as Education and Gender and Women Studies for decades, researchers in the Information and Library Science field have been increasingly involved, as many makerspaces are housed in public and academic libraries (Melo & Rabkin, 2019). Existing scholarship provides a variety of angles to investigate this problem.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Description framework of makerspaces: Examining the relationship between spatial arrangement and diverse user populations

Melo

March

Hirsh

et al. 2023

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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As makerspaces continue to proliferate in academic and public libraries, researchers and educators are increasingly concerned with ensuring these STEM-rich learning environments are inclusive to historically marginalized student communities. This article offers a new framework, the Description Framework of Makerspaces, to outline the relationship between the spatial qualities of makerspaces and the user population it attracts. This study represents the first phase of a 5-year research program dedicated to analyzing the everyday life information seeking practices that students (un)intentionally make when deciding to engage with a STEM-rich learning environment such as a makerspace. Using constructivist grounded framework to analyze interview data from 17 academic makerspace leaders, we theorize 2 propositions from the main findings: (a) the act of defining a makerspace is difficult and in tension with several imaginings of a makerspace: imagined, ideal, and experienced and (b) a makerspace is significantly composed of affective features that are often unarticulated and abstract. By conceptualizing makerspaces as environments that are configured by both physical and affective characteristics, we reveal insights regarding a baseline conceptualization of the features of a conventional academic makerspace and the design decisions that makerspace leaders make and are confronted with.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Description framework of makerspaces: Examining the relationship between spatial arrangement and diverse user populations

Melo

March

Hirsh

et al. 2023

Asso for Info Science & Tech

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Teaching Introductory Materials Engineering Via Additive Manufacturing

Chambers

2024

The Minerals, Metals &Amp; Materials Series

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Hands-on tasks make learning visible: a learning analytics lens on the development of mechanistic problem-solving expertise in makerspaces

Davis,

Schneider,

Rosenbaum

et al. 2023

Education Tech Research Dev

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This study investigated the impact of participating in a year-long digital-fabrication course on high-school seniors’ problem-solving skills, with a focus on problems involving mechanistic systems. The research questions centered on whether working in a makerspace impacted students’ abilities to solve such problems and whether the process data generated during problem-solving activities could be used to identify the different problem-solving approaches taken by the participants. A novel set of hands-on, mechanistic problems were created to answer these questions, and the results showed that after taking part in the course students performed significantly better on these problems, with the post-course students making more progress towards the solutions than the pre-course students. The process data revealed two distinct problem-solving approaches for each problem, one adopted primarily by experts (the expert approach) and one by pre-course students (the novice approach). The post-course students were more likely to adopt the expert approaches, which were strongly associated with better performance on each problem. The study found that participation in the course made the high-school students better able to “see” the various components and their ways of interacting, making them more like expert engineers.

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Makerspaces in Libraries at U.S. Public Colleges and Universities: A Census

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Description framework of makerspaces: Examining the relationship between spatial arrangement and diverse user populations

Description framework of makerspaces: Examining the relationship between spatial arrangement and diverse user populations

Teaching Introductory Materials Engineering Via Additive Manufacturing

Hands-on tasks make learning visible: a learning analytics lens on the development of mechanistic problem-solving expertise in makerspaces

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