No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Fab:UNIverse - Makerspaces, Fab Labs and Lab Managers in Academia
Abstract
Fab Labs and "Maker" practices have been recognized in research and practice as contexts that facilitate creativity, knowledge sharing and collaboration [4], [10]. Personal digital fabrication is getting increasing attention from various fields like education, engineering, innovation, design, humanitarian aid or regional development [6], [1], [7], [3]. However, integrating Fab Lab environments into academic education is still challenging in practice. In Germany, more than 200 such creative community spaces exist [5]; around 15 of these are associated with universities. Most are initiated and run by single entities such as student groups or university chairs and are not integrated in the universities' overall organizational matters. The federal research project 'FAB101' aims to consolidate organizational and educational knowledge based on experiences in four Fab Labs at German universities [9]. We propose a workshop to share and discuss results, to open up our research to a European community and to encourage collaboration between academic Lab practitioners.
... Lehrende, Laborverantwortliche und Forschende sollen damit in der Entwicklung neuer didaktischer Szenarien unterstützt und dadurch die Nutzung von bereits bestehenden Labs hinsichtlich diverser Zielgruppen gestärkt werden. Die Autoren möchten damit den Lesenden einen praxisorientierten Überblick zu aktuell praktizierten didaktischen Szenarien in diesen häufig -wie auch von Stickel et al. (2019) -als Maker-oder FabLab bezeichneten Räumen liefern. Der Artikel soll somit die Umsetzung neuer bzw. ...
Dieser Artikel beschreibt die Ergebnisse einer explorativen Studie zur aktuellen Nutzungssituation von neun an Hochschulen in Ostösterreich angesiedelten Lehr- und Lernräumen im Bereich der digitalen Produktionstechnologien. Leitfadengestützt führten Forschende, die selbst in der Laborlehre, -gestaltung und -organisation eingebunden sind, bis zu einstündige semi-strukturierte Interviews mit den jeweiligen Lab-Expert:innen. Die damit erhobenen Daten wurden danach im Rahmen einer qualitativen inhaltlichen Analyse den Komponenten didaktischer Szenarien nach Reinmann (2015) zugeordnet. Daraus ergab sich sowohl, welche (teils spielerischen) Formen von Vermittlung, Aktivierung, Betreuung und Überprüfung zur Kompetenz- bzw. Wissensaneignung angewendet werden, als auch welche Alternativen aufgrund der Coronapandemie zur Online-Laborlehre geschaffen wurden. Die Untersuchung zeigt, dass sich die Nutzungssituation zwar bedingt durch inhaltliche Schwerpunkte und Zielgruppenausrichtung unterscheidet, jedoch die angewendeten Lehr-Lernszenarien vergleichbar sind. Dabei steht der spielerische Charakter des Ausprobierens und Kennenlernens im Vordergrund. Erkannt wurde ebenfalls, dass – aufgrund hohen organisatorischen, personellen und infrastrukturellen Aufwands – aktuell nur wenige tatsächlich durchführbare Online-Settings (z. B. Distanzlaborlehre) bestehen. Zudem erkennen die Autoren der Studie ein ungenutztes Potenzial der Labore in der zielgruppenübergreifenden Nutzung. So werden etwa die Labore zumeist nur für lediglich einige wenige bzw. ähnliche Zielgruppen (z. B. kleine und mittlere Unternehmen oder Lehrpersonen) genutzt. Die Autoren stellen in diesem Artikel beispielhaft dar, wie diese Räume weiteren Zielgruppen wie Schüler:innen, Studierende, Lehrende etc. für Aktivitäten im Wissenstransfer gemeinsam nutzbar gemacht werden können. Dazu werden abschliessend Empfehlungen hinsichtlich einer Nutzung für mehrere Zielgruppen sowie zur Integration von virtuellen und spielerischen Ansätzen in Form eines Beispielszenarios mit Praxisüberlegungen beschrieben. Dieses soll ein Angebot für bestehende Labs sein, heterogenere Lerngruppen in Betracht zu ziehen, und die Ausgangsbasis für weitere empirische Untersuchungen hinsichtlich der Anwendbarkeit dieses Szenarios für diversere Gruppen darstellen.
... While there is often a tendency to consider digital practices as disembodied, these cannot be separated from the physical learning context nor the emotional aspects it entails (Pischetola, 2022). Literature shows the rise in the adoption of spaces such as Teaching Factories (Abele et al., 2018;Kreß et al., 2023), Makerspaces, and Fab Labs (Stickel et al., 2019). The implementation of these LSs is highly driven by technology with few works discussing their pedagogical and spatial foundations. ...
The impact COVID-19 generated on people routine linked with the rapid digitalization has led the educational approach to the need of a fundamental shift. In response to these evolving circumstances, SMILE (Smart Manufacturing Innovation, Learning-Labs, and Entrepreneurship) has undertaken a comprehensive initiative in order to move from the traditional learning labs towards digital ones. This digital transformation aims to enhance students’ learning experiences and problem-solving capabilities by leveraging technologies and innovative approaches. Digital Learning Nuggets are central to this paradigm shift, which are small units of interactive and engaging educational content. These nuggets have proven instrumental in augmenting students’ comprehension and retention of subject matter while fostering a more personalized learning journey. Moreover, the integration of MIRO, a collaborative software platform, further drives students’ learning by facilitating interactive discussions and fostering teamwork in a virtual environment. SMILE’s digital learning lab (SMILE DLL) serves as the foundation for the upcoming Hackathon, an event characterized by the collaboration between academia and industry. In collaboration with various companies, this experiential learning initiative offers students the opportunity to tackle problems posed by these organizations. Participants gain invaluable insights into real-world applications of their knowledge and are better equipped to address complex issues in a professional context. The Hackathon represents the link between academia and industry, fostering a dynamic environment where students can apply theoretical concepts in order to solve real problems. This immersive learning experience not only fosters their critical thinking and analytical skills but also nurtures creativity, adaptability, and teamwork, paramount attributes for today’s competitive job market.
Since several years now, there has been a proliferation of prodigious spaces for fostering creativity and innovation. Governments, companies, universities, and communities have turned to the implementation of innovation labs as the places where innovation processes are expected to be enhanced through open and agile forms of collaboration. However, there are concerns on how the lack of a clear and shared strategic intent undermines the innovation labs’ purpose and how these initiatives struggle to share and align their strategic intent with all the stakeholders. Thus, this dissertation, following an action research approach under multiple research settings, aims to explain how the strategic intent of innovation labs is built and can be used to guide their performance. Throughout this thesis, innovation labs are recognized as intermediary organizational forms created to support and facilitate the innovation intent in multi-stakeholder contexts. Moreover, it is also addressed how innovation lab settings require sensemaking and feedback processes that allow them to create and maintain a strategic alignment among their stakeholders. Accordingly, this work focuses on the design of mechanisms that enable (1) the representation of the constituent elements of the organizational strategic intent of an innovation lab, (2) understanding how this intent unfolds over time and the stages it goes through, and (3) the identification of competences and roles within innovation lab teams that help to navigate the innovation lab intent. Altogether, they constitute a methodological approach to support strategy making processes in such collaborative environments.
This contribution describes the current state of the ongoing German federal research project 'FAB101' which explores Fab Labs and their role in German academia for three years by way of a real-world, action-oriented research infrastructure of four existing (Fab) Labs at universities. Currently, the results point to infrastructure, collaboration aspects and governance as well as educational concept issues as main factors influencing the more widespread adoption of personal digital fabrication and Fab Labs in German academia. This contribution details these results further and draws some first conclusions as well as recommendations. It also describes FAB101's distributed research infrastructure and methodology and is intended to invite further comments, discussions and input for the project.
In the current paper is documented an ongoing education program designed at FabLab Madrid CEU (the Digital Fabrication Laboratory based at CEU University's Institute of Technology) to teach high-school students STEM in a university environment through digital fabrication technologies. Inspired by the ideas of Neil Gershenfeld and Paulo Blikstein, we are using digital fabrication as a learning tool through which we attempt to create a working educational environment to improve the motivation of the students to finish their pre-college studies and to start a career at the university. All the pedagogies that we are exploring though the programs are based on Seymour Papert concepts related to the use of technology as a building material, the need of a "learning by doing" approach, the importance of learning to learn to keep learning or the benefits of enjoying while learning.
Disclaimer/ The/ works/ available/ here/ are/ the/ responsibility/ of/ the/ individual/ author(s)/ and/ do/ not/ necessarily/ represent/ the/ views/ of/ other/ SPRU/ researchers./ As/ maLers/ of/ policy/ and/ prac5ce,/ SPRU/ does/ not/ endorse/individual/research/contribu5ons./ Guidelines.for.authors/ Papers/ shall/ be/ submiLed/ in/ pdf/ or/ Word/ format./ They/ should/ contain/ a/ 5tle,/ an/ abstract,/ and/ keywords./Papers/should/be/submiLed/to/one/of/the/Editors,/who/will/process/them/and/send/them/ to/the/appropriate/Associate/Editor./Two/members/of/SPRU/will/be/asked/to/provide/a/short/wriLen/ review/ within/ three/ weeks./ The/ revised/ versions/ of/ the/ paper,/ together/ with/ a/ reply/ to/ the/ reviewers,/should/be/sent/to/the/Associate/Editor,/who/will/propose/to/the/Editors/its/publica5on/on/ the/series./When/submiOng/the/authors/should/indicate/if/the/paper/has/already/undergone/peer)
This contribution summarizes the agenda and some first results of a three-year research project on the integration of Fab Labs in German universities and academic practices.
While fabrication technologies have been in use in industry for several decades, expiring patents have recently allowed the technology to spill over to technology-enthusiastic "makers". The big question now is whether the technology will further progress towards consumers, which would allow the technology to scale from hundreds of thousands of users to hundreds of millions of users. Such a transition would enable consumers to use computing not just to process data, but for physical matter. This holds the promise of democratizing a whole range of fields preoccupied with physical objects, from product design to interior design, to carpentry, and to some areas of mechanical and structural engineering. It would bring massive, disruptive change to these industries and their users. We analyze similar trends in the history of computing that made the transition from industry to consumers, such as desktop publishing and home video editing, and come to the conclusion that such a transition is likely. Our analysis, however, also reveals that any transition to consumers first requires a hardware + software system that embodies the skills and expert knowledge that consumers lack: (1) hardware and materials that allow fabricating the intended objects, (2) software that embodies domain knowledge, (3) software that embodies the know-how required to operate the machinery, and (4) software that provides immediate feedback and supports interactive exploration. At the same time, sustained success will only be possible if we also consider future implications, in particular (5) sustainability and (6) intellectual property. We argue that researchers in HCI and computer graphics are well equipped for tackling these six challenges. We survey the already existing work and derive an actionable research agenda.
The Maker Movement is a community of hobbyists, tinkerers, engineers, hackers, and artists who creatively design and build projects for both playful and useful ends. There is growing interest among educators in bringing making into K-12 education to enhance opportunities to engage in the practices of engineering, specifically, and STEM more broadly. This article describes three elements of the Maker Movement, and associated research needs, necessary to understand its promise for education: 1) digital tools, including rapid prototyping tools and low-cost microcontroller platforms, that characterize many making projects; 2) community infrastructure, including online resources and in-person spaces and events; and 3) the maker mindset, aesthetic principles, and habits of mind that are commonplace within the community. It further outlines how the practices of making align with research on beneficial learning environments.
FabLab: of machines, makers and inventors. Cultural and media studies
- J Walter-Herrmann
- C Bueching
- Walter-Herrmann J.
Walter-Herrmann, J., and Bueching, C., Eds. FabLab: of
machines, makers and inventors. Cultural and media
studies. transcript, Bielefeld, 2013. OCLC: 852506034.
FabLabs in design education
- Mostert-Van Der
- M Sar
- I Mulder
- L Remijn
- P Troxler
Mostert-Van Der Sar, M., Mulder, I., Remijn, L., and
Troxler, P. FabLabs in design education. In DS 76: Proc.
of E&PDE 2013 (2013).
Makerspaces in the university community
- J Weinmann
- Weinmann J.
Weinmann, J. Makerspaces in the university community.
Master's thesis, 2014.