Learning in the Making
The Learning in the Making projects were among the first empirical studies of the Maker Movement in education. Alongside co-Principal Investigator Kimberly Sheridan (George Mason University), Erica and her team has taken an ethnographic and design-based approach in order to understand how and what people learn from their participation in makerspaces, and also to explore how features of these environments can be leveraged to create designed learning experiences. The team conducted ethnographic case studies of makerspaces that are rich learning sites to understand the learning arrangements and processes that emerge in these spaces and investigate how technologies are learned and used. Through collaboration with one of these sites, the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh’s MAKESHOP, the team designed a series of learning experiences that will build on MAKESHOP’s existing activities.
The team also worked on the development, testing, and dissemination of an online critique and portfolio tool for young people participating in makerspaces across the United States. This project resulted from ethnographic work that demonstrated how informal critique of work over time plays a vital role in learning through making. In each of the makerspaces we studied, when facilitators and/or peers engaged in reflective critique of work, the making process was more sustained and included important design practices such as wider exploration of possibilities, revision and iteration. As a result we: 1) built an online critique and portfolio system for maker projects; 2) trained mentors to use the critique and portfolio system at their makerspace sites and; 3) studied how the system impacts young makers’ learning, development, and self-efficacy.
Publications
Erica is the co-Editor of the two volume Makeology series, a collection of empirical essays exploring making, makerspaces, and makers. Order the books here!
Halverson, E. R. & Peppler, K. (2018). The Maker Movement and learning. In F. Fischer, C. Hmelo-Silver, S. Goldman, & P. Reimann (Eds.), The International Handbook of the Learning Sciences, Chapter 34.
EMMET: Exploring Making through Mobile Emerging Technology
EMMET is a collaborative effort between the Learning in the Making Lab and Northcentral Technical College to design and deploy a mobile maker space in rural communities by training local area teens to serve as maker facilitators in their own communities. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the work is located in a rural region of Wisconsin with many manufacturing companies desperate for engineers and skilled employees who have a science and engineering background. This project targets rural Wisconsin youth to provide them with learning opportunities and careers pathways associated with computer technology and engineering, both critical occupational areas across numerous industries. Northcentral Technical College, in collaboration with the Science Museum of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, six community-based organizations, and four school districts, will engage and prepare teachers and students to meet this challenge. As computing has become integral to the practice of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), the STEM + Computing program seeks to address emerging challenges in computational STEM areas through the applied integration of computational thinking and computing within disciplinary STEM teaching and learning from early childhood education through high school (preK-12).
Halverson and the Learning and the Making team are conducting research to determine to what extent, (1) informal learning environments increase interest and enrollments in formal high-computing technology and engineering courses; (2) how the implementation of near-peer and adult informal teaching and mentoring increases the near-peer mentor and participants' interest in pursuing postsecondary computing technology and engineering career pathways; and (3) how leadership and mentorship training of adults and high school students impacts informal learning opportunities. Further, the research will address three key questions: (1) Will drop-in, open-ended Maker (engineering and technology) experiences impact community perception of, and interest in, computing technology and engineering learning and careers?; (2) What do students who become Maker mentors learn about computing technology and engineering content, learn about themselves as Makers and STEM learners, and how does this participation impact their postsecondary learning or career trajectories?; and (3) What aspects of the community-involved Maker experiences are sustained beyond institutional intervention? This project will provide a model for regions with distributed, rural populations in building capacity for young people to develop skills and self-efficacy for participating in the emerging rural manufacturing STEM+Computing fields of the future.
Publications
Nixon, J., Halverson, E., Stoiber, A., & Garbacz, A. (2021). ‘I played a song with the help of a magic banana’: Assessing short-term making events. Information and Learning Sciences.
Halverson, E. R., Dando, M., Willis, N., & Jeppesen, V. (2020). If you build it, who will come? Recruiting rural students to participate in computational thinking through making. Journal of Science Education and Technology.
Critique in Art & Design
Critique as Learning Strategy in Art and Design Education. Learning in the Making serves as the research team for Provost Elissa Tenney’s (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) work exploring how critique functions in higher education classrooms. With the Spencer Foundation’s support, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago has collaborated with six leading schools of art and design to plan a research project on higher education in art and design. With the information gleaned from the Spencer-funded planning period, the research project described in this proposal has been designed to interrogate how critique may influence metacognition. This study is structured around three broad research questions: (1) What are the varieties of critique practiced at the six partner institutions? (2) Is metacognition manifested and developed in and through critique? (3) What, if any, relationship exists among manifestations of metacognition and the types of critique used?
Publication
Halverson, E. R., Saplan, K., Stoiber, A., & Rabkin, N. (2020). The role of critique in student-artists metacognitive practices. In K. Knutson, T. Okada, & K. Crowley (Eds.), Multidisciplinary approaches to art learning and creativity: Fostering exploration in formal and informal settings (pp. 167-188). NY: Routledge.
Making in Libraries and Museums
Bubbler @ Madison Public Libraries: A system-wide approach to learning through making. Co-PIs Erica Halverson and Dr. Rebekah Willett (UW-Madison), in collaboration with Madison Public Library (MPL), conducted a two-year study of makerspaces and learning across the MPL system. We studied how MPL is building a production-oriented approach to literacy and learning through their maker-focused program, the “Bubbler”. This project directly addresses IMLS strategic Goal 1: “plac[ing] the learner at the center and support[ing] engaging experiences in libraries and museums that prepare people to be full participants in their local communities and our global society.” Our proposal identifies the needs of audiences at the national and local level. On the national level, our project speaks to LIS and educational research communities, LIS professionals, members of informal learning institutions, and organizers of designed makerspaces. At the local level, it addresses underserved populations inthe Madison area and MPL in evaluating and developing the Bubbler. Erica continues to partner with the Bubbler, working on their “Making spaces” initiative with Madison Public Schools and on an assessment tool for teachers.
BAM @ Betty Brinn Children’s Museum. The Learning in the Making Lab partners with the Be A Makerspace (BAM) at the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum on a range of projects including a large-scale field test of a music maker program and the Teacher Studio, a professional development program for teachers interested in making.
Youth Media Arts Organizations
As part of the MacArthur Foundation-funded effort, A Productive Approach to Learning & Media Literacy through Video Games and Simulations, Erica and her team conducted a series of studies focused on digital media literacy in youth media arts organizations. We we conducted in-depth case studies with four youth media arts organizations across the US that worked with adolescents to produce digital art about the stories of their lives. Our research focused on both the process of art-making and the products that resulted from these processes. Erica was also the co-PI on, “Fantasy baseball as competitive fandom,” a small study of the practices of expert and novice fantasy baseball leagues to understand how thinking and learning happens in these game spaces.