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Informal Learning in a Public Library Makerspace for Youth in the Netherlands

Informal learning spaces create opportunities for children and youth to develop their talents and to experience new social roles. In recent years, several public libraries in the Netherlands have established makerspaces to empower youth by facilitating the development of their digital skills in conjunction with their creativity. The Amsterdam Public Library created a network of makerspaces (Maakplaats021) and provided training for the makerspace-coaches. These coaches – former librarians or other professionals – have a central role in the makerspace and fulfill several functions. This contribution describes informal learning of children in these makerspaces and distills critical features that enforce learning through the lens of children aged 8–12 and their makerspace-coaches.

Self-evaluation of learning activities by children in a library-makerspace

Learning activities in a makerspace are hands-on and characterized by design and inquiry. Evaluation is needed both for learners and their coaches in order to effectively guide the learning process of the children and for feedback on the effectiveness of the after-school maker activities. Due to its constructionist nature, learning in a makerspace requires specific forms of evaluation. In this paper we describe the development of an instrument that facilitates and captures reflection on the activities that children undertook in a library makerspace. Our aim is to capture learning in this context with multiple instruments: analysis of the artifacts that are made, observation of hands-on activities and interviews - which all are time consuming methods. Hence, we developed an easy to use tool for self-evaluation of maker learner activities for children. We build on the design of a visual instrument used for learning by design and inquiry in primary education. The findings and results are transferable to (formative) assessment and evaluation of learning activities by learners in other types of education and specific in maker education.

Activities and experiences of children and makerspace coaches during after school and school programs in a public library makerspace

UNLABELLED: Public library makerspaces intend to contribute to the development of children from marginalized communities through the education of digital technology and creativity and by stimulating young people to experience new social roles and develop their identity. Learning in these informal settings puts demands on the organization of the makerspace, the activities, and the support of the children. The present study investigates how children evaluate their activities and experiences in a public library makerspace both in the after-school programs and during school visits. Furthermore, it examines the effectiveness of the training program for the makerspace coaches. The study covers self-evaluations by children ( n = 307), and interviews with children ( n = 27) and makerspace coaches ( n = 11). Children report a lot of experiences concerning creating (maker skills, creativity) and maker mindset (motivation, persistence, confidence). Experiences with collaboration (helping each other) were mentioned to a lesser extent. Critical features of the training program for makerspace coaches were (i) adaptation to the prior knowledge, skills and needs of makerspace coaches, (ii) input of expert maker educators, (iii) emphasis on learning by doing, (iv) room for self-employed learning, and (v) collaboration with colleagues. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41979-022-00070-w.

Creativiteit in Maakplaats 021

Learning to enhance children's creativity in a makerspace

Maker education offers opportunities to stimulate the creativity of young people in various types of education. How to guide these learning processes, however, is an unexplored area for the supervisors (teachers and librarians). In the research-project presented, a professional learning community of librarians, teacher-researchers and maker educators investigates the pedagogy of ‘making’. The learning community consisted of twelve makerspace-coaches, three maker educators and three researchers. The interventions for enhancing creativity that were developed varied from redesign of the tasks to new forms of guiding students. It was noticed that the children came up with new ideas and were motivated to push out their frontiers. Furthermore, the coaches experienced that children’s creativity is not always visible in the final products of their making process, but rather in the process of making. The learning community turned out to be a fruitful approach for professionalization of makerspace-coaches.

Selfevaluation tool for learning by children in a maker space

Maker spaces are generally regarded as a valuable innovation in comparison to traditional education, although it is largely unclear what is exactly learned. This deficiency hampers the deployment of maker spaces, particularly their embedding and integration in the existing practice in formal education. In the work presented here, we explore the possibility of having learners self-report on their learning experience. For this purpose, we developed an easy-to-use visual tool for assessing learning of 21st Century Skills in children’s maker space activities, the Self-Evaluation Tool (SET). Particularly, we investigated the validation of the SET for the self-evaluation of learning activities in the maker space and how children evaluate their own performance in the various domains. The results show higher scores on learning goals in subjectification and lower scores for socialization. Future research will focus on a comparison of the different types of maker programs.