Remaking Education is pleased to announce the winner of the Grant for Remaking Education through Action Together (GREAT).  This $15,000 grant was available to support ideas hatched during the Remaking Education event and which embody the event’s core principles. The winner of the GREAT is:

Faculty as Students: Using Makerspaces to Remake Education

Inspired by the DESIGN experience at Remaking Education, this project will provide a situational opportunity for 20 faculty members at the University of New Haven to collaborate with the people and other resources of MakeHaven, a community makerspace in New Haven, as well as with peer faculty from Bucknell University who are experienced with hands-on, experiential learning in the college environment. Its objectives are to build a community of faculty comfortable within the collaborative, experimental and hands-on culture of makerspaces – qualities that were foundational to the Remaking Education event – and ready to envision ways in which they might incorporate the power of authentic project-based learning into their own classes.

Project Lead:

• Maria-Isabel Carnasciali, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Chair, Department of Engineering & Applied Science Education; and Director, University Makerspace, at the University of New Haven

Project Collaborators:

• Margot Vigeant, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Faculty Coordinator, B-FAB Bucknell Fabrication Workshop, at Bucknell University
• J.R. Logan, Executive Director, MakeHaven, in New Haven, CT

Fall 2021 Update

Our effort was to promote awareness of makerspaces and their incorporation into the higher-ed curricula. With construction delays followed by pandemic delays, our campus-wide makerspace did not (soft) open until Fall 2020, and we are now excited for ramped-up usage this coming year as we return to campus with reduced COVID-restrictions.

The findings from the study (cohort of faculty involved in GREAT grant) will be presented this fall at the Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference and published in the proceedings. In addition, the work done under the GREAT grant provided the foundation for another study through the MENTORSHIP 360 Effort from Arizona State University. In this effort, we plan to investigate a buddy-system model for promoting faculty development that results in faculty embracing and leveraging makerspaces in their educational endeavors. It is exciting to continue this work and pursue ways to continue transforming how we tackle education.

Fall 2019 Update

Summer participants presented their projects on September 24 to an appreciative audience, and there was great excitement from faculty as they realize the power of exploring. The leadership team is in the process of working with an evaluation team (from their Master’s in Organizational Psychology program) to collect all the data/narratives from the participants, as well as capturing insights from those who dropped out so they can learn from that experience.

Project Lead Maria-Isabel Carnasciali and a colleague attended a train-the-trainer workshop this summer at Bucknell which “was incredibly eye opening on how faculty engage with the makerspace equipment.” The program provided Professor Carnasciali with the opportunity to draft possible workshops for faculty to change the conversation.

Project Collaborator Margot Vigeant visited UNew Haven from Bucknell this fall and together with Professor Carnasciali held a workshop at the UNew Haven campus for faculty to explore how they can integrate making into their courses. It was attended by faculty from all sorts of programs. Two Deans and the Director of the Teaching & Learning Center were impressed with the array of faculty present and their level ofengagement.

We are also delighted to award smaller grants to two additional projects that also embody the spirit of Remaking Education:

Design-Build-Deliver: The Democratization of STEM

The newly founded Lewisburg Children’s Museum (LCM) is located in rural central Pennsylvania and engages an economically diverse, underserved, rural audience. LCM will host fabrication workshops to introduce children, their early teachers, and their caregivers to fabrication equipment. The project will also involve undergraduate students and faculty in fabrication training and authentic projects within the informal, collaborative learning environment of a children’s museum. The Design-Build-Deliver team envisions shaping this all-ages democratization of “making for a cause” into a portable demonstration project and to develop a ‘train the trainer’ workshop that can have impact far beyond central Pennsylvania.

Project Leads:

• Erin Jablonski, President and Founder, Lewisburg Children’s Museum; Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, Director of Pre-College Engineering Programs, at Bucknell University
• Marian Marchioro, Director and STEM Education Coordinator, Lewisburg Children’s Museum
• Margot Vigeant, Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Faculty Coordinator, B-FAB Bucknell Fabrication Workshop, at Bucknell University

Fall 2019 Update

Using GREAT funds, the Lewisburg Children's Museum was able to jumpstart a mini-makerspace, complete with 3D printer, soldering stations, and vinyl cutter. All of this equipment was incorporated into an engineering summer camp for 25 children. They were also able to collaborate with engineering faculty from Bucknell University and nationwide during Bucknell's B-Fab makerspace pedagogy workshop. Faculty spent an evening at the museum, examining exhibits, and brainstorming collaborations that they and their students could do both with LCM and similar facilities near their home institutions. In addition, the mini maker space equipment has been used by staff in exhibit fabrication for use by children on the Museum floor. The LCM looks forward to monthly mini-Maker space programs starting this fall. 

The Learning City

The Foundry Consortium, a new non-profit focusing on the connections between STEM and the arts, and connected to the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority, is surveying city residents about their interests in becoming engaged in community programming. The Foundry will host face-to-face meetings to engage members of the Cambridge community in dialogues about how they might envision themselves interacting with the Foundry. Questions they will ask include: What do you want to learn? How do you want to learn? Whom do you want to learn from? What might you want to teach? How and under what conditions? The Foundry’s report on the outcomes of these conversations will inform future program development related to life-long education, and may serve as a model for other communities seeking to develop stronger connections between and among diverse populations, especially in relation to education.

Project Lead:

• Stephanie Couch, Executive Director, Lemelson-MIT Program

Project Collaborators:

• Betsy Boyle, Director of Operations, Lemelson-MIT Program
• Martha McKenna, Director of the Creativity Commons, Lesley University
• Sue Cusack, Director of the STEAM Learning Lab, Lesley University
• Katherine Shozawa, Director of Community Engagement, Lesley University
• Jeff Goldenson, Special Projects Strategist, Olin College

Fall 2019 Update

Our first face-to-face meeting, the March 2019 Foundry Coffee Chat, was well attended, providing neighborhood residents with an update and opportunity to offer feedback on programming at the Foundry. Efforts have continued, with a total of 213 individual meetings and 63 group meetings between April 2018 and July 2019. Online survey fielded over four-months (February 21, 2019 – June 30, 2019) yielded responses from 89 participants.

These efforts have surfaced interests in a wide range of program offerings in STEM and the arts, and a desire for community, cultural and civic engagement. From the survey responses and ongoing community dialogues, we have observed that the program types envisioned in the current space design are aligned with the community’s vision for use of the space.

The large number and diverse array of proposals that were submitted to this grant competition serve as evidence that Remaking Education was deeply generative, long after the event itself concluded.  As we noted in the program and the opening remarks, our hope was that participants would come to this event as a crowd, but leave as a parade, marching to a shared drumbeat about the future of education. 

We will update this website with reports from each of the GREAT recipients. We would also be especially delighted to receive comments from YOU about how you have continued to put the ideas and experiences you had at Remaking Education into practice in your own context.  Please send those to us at: remaking.education@olin.edu.

Remaking Education sketch provided by Margot Vigeant