Hands-On LearningThe Role of Maker Culture in Innovative Pedagogy

Will EngleStrategist, Open Education Initiatives

Centre for Teaching and Learning, UBC

Erin FieldsLiaison Librarian and Flexible Learning Coordinator

UBC Library

ed-tech, so one argument goes, will make education more efficient, more scalable, more personalized. It will liberate students from those terrible large lecture halls… by videotaping the lectures and putting them on the Internet….

The ed-tech that fuels maker [culture] does something different. It recognizes that learning is messy. It recognizes that small and local still matters…[It] is personal learning.

Audrey Watters

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Maker culture encourages informal, shared learning...it emphasises experimentation, innovation, acceptance of risk taking

Thinking is often regarded both in philosophic theory and in educational practice as something cut off from experience, and capable of being cultivated in isolation. In fact, the inherent limitations of experience are often urged as the sufficient ground for attention to thinking.

John Dewey

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Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

Paulo Freire

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Construction that takes place "in the head" often happens especially felicitously when it's supported by construction of a more public sort "in the world" - a sand castle or a cake, a Lego house or a corporation, a computer program, a poem, or a theory of the universe.

Seymour Papert

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Research-engaged teaching involves more research and research-like activities at the core of the undergraduate curriculum.

….emphasises the role of the student as collaborators in the production of knowledge. The capacity for Student as Producer is grounded in the human attributes of creativity and desire, so that students can recognise themselves in a world of their own design.

Mike Neary

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In the end, an essay or an exam is an instance of busywork: usually written in haste; for one particular reader, the professor; and thereafter discarded.

Jon Beasley-Murray

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Inputs:•Learners work on problems that haven’t been fully solved or questions that haven’t been fully answered.

•Learners share their work with others, not just their instructor.

•Learners are given a degree of autonomy in their work.Derek Bruff

The teacher does not function as the primary source of knowledge in the classroom. Instead, the professor is viewed as a facilitator or ― coach who assists students who are seen as the primary architects of their learning.

Michael Moscolo

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Teachers are a catalyst or helper to students who establish and enforce their own rules … (they) respond to student work through neutral feedback and encourage students to provide alternative/additional responses… (they) ask mostly divergent questions and few recall questions.

Hancock, Bray and Nason (2003)

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Inputs:•Instructors facilitate learning through interaction with novice learner

•Instructors bridge the learning gap through scaffolding

•Instructors provide space for public dialogue and social interaction over the learning that has occurred

Activity 1 What are the challenges/barriers to such an approach?

What impact do you think this shift has on learning outcomes?

UBC Case Studies● Math students create a

sharable, reusable resource● Educators create a DIY Media Community

to support creation of media rich learning

● Librarian students create Readers’ Advisory Machine

● Physics students create learning resources for the course curriculum

Activity 2Write a summary of an academic article.

Write a 12 page paper using archival material on the BC Gold Rush.

1. What resources are needed?2. How does this shift change the nature of the activity/assignment?3. How do you assess the activity?

Educational practices that we know work well: small group discussion, collaboration, participatory, project-based, and peer-to-peer learning, experimentation, inquiry, curiosity, play.

Audrey Watters

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