As the maker movement is increasingly adopted into K‐12 schools and nonformal makerspaces, students have more opportunities to generate unique, personalized projects and artifacts, such as computer programs, robots, DIY electronics and to develop new competencies and skills. Digital making technologies if coupled with proper learning methodologies such as suggested by Constructivism (Piaget, 1974) and Constructionism (Papert & Harel, 1991) can provide learning experiences that promote young people’s creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and problem-solving skills, the essential skills necessary in the workplace of the 21st century (21st C Skills). However, assessment of these higher order skills is not easy, particularly within these open-ended environments where students create unique solution paths to problems, interact with peers, and act in both the physical and digital worlds. Currently, digital technologies offer novel methods and solutions to assess the 21st century skills and offer insights to learners’ efforts and achievements that become available for both learners and researchers. Thus, the goal of this project is to provide, pilot and validate novel assessment methods and tools intended to use for the assessment of 21st century skills. The assessment solutions will be piloted in different learning contexts but focused on makerspaces (schools and nonformal ie the makerspaces will be either currently located in Schools or will be nonformal spaces whose programmes engage with School groups). The project partnership will run learning environments that will enable students to act as makers using a wide variety of physical and digital tools through hands-on experiences that emphasize collaboration and creativity following inquiry-based approaches instead of direct instruction of facts and formulas. Teachers and non-formal educators will receive training and will be highly involved in planning and implementing the activities. Finally, the project will report findings and conclusions from implementations and assessments that will take place in 5 schools and 4 non-formal maker spaces in 4 countries. Participants will be drawn from the 4 partner countries (Ireland, Greece, Sweden and Cyprus) and will be secondary school teachers, nonformal educators and facilitators and students/learners (aged 12-18 years) who use makerspaces. Expected participant numbers: - Students 250 - Teachers 10 - Facilitators 6 - Schools 9 The planned Outputs are: O1: A digital solution to assess 21st century skills for teachers and students O2: Open Educational Resources to help teachers and students to implement the solution available via the project website. O3: An evaluation report on findings and results from the implementation of the assessment solution in pilots with teachers and students The main activities will be: - Design of the digital assessment solution, specific to the needs of makerspaces - Development of the digital solution - Development of methodology and resources to help/guide teachers and students - Training course for teachers & educators - Pilots in makerspaces currently located in Schools and in nonformal makerspaces who engage with School groups - Evaluation The project is expected to promote more effective learning in these makerspaces by enhancing the understanding of learners, their needs and the impact of learning interventions. The assessment methods are expected to improve the scalability of the maker movement in education since they may not only reveal students’ skills developed throughout specific learning activities, but they could also help researchers and teachers/educators design better curricula, pedagogical approaches, and learning resources for makerspaces in schools and nonformal centres.
Currently, digital technologies offer novel methods and solutions to assess 21st C skills and offer insights to learners’ efforts and achievements that become available to both learners and researchers. The objectives for this project were to develop and pilot such a digital assessment solution specific to the needs of makerspaces and thereby to: • enable teachers to provide evidence of competencies and skills development • improve the scalability of the maker movement in education by revealing students’ skills developed throughout specific learning activities, • assist researchers and teachers/educators to design better curricula, pedagogical approaches, and learning resources for makerspaces in schools and nonformal centres, • and facilitate the integration of makerspaces into formal education systems Makerspaces are being embraced and integrated in different ways, levels and pace by the education systems of various countries; by conducting pilots in schools and nonformal makerspaces in a range of these countries we could also evaluate how the tool could work across this range and increase cross-border learnings regarding successful integration practices.
As the maker movement is increasingly adopted into K‐12 schools, students have more opportunities to generate unique projects and artifacts, such as computer programs, robots, DIY electronics and to develop new competencies and skills. Making can provide learning experiences that promote young people’s creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and problem-solving skills, the essential skills necessary in the workplace of the 21st century (21st C Skills). While current makerspaces in schools and non-formal education claim that they develop these 21st C skills, the main problem is the lack of assessment tools to validate this. These higher order skills are not easily assessed with the current assessment tools (questionnaires, drill tests etc). This problematic situation usually results in simplistic evidence and subjective opinions of teachers and learners about the value of such learning environments. The potential for makerspaces to be more officially integrated into the formal education system is currently being explored and progressed across Europe. Therefore it is important for teachers to have the ability to validate if the 21stC Skills they experience to be fostered by this learning environment are occurring in practice.