Keywords

1 Introduction

The promotion of educational innovations involving maker-centered learning has been substantially disrupted in teacher education programs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This problem is unique since maker-centered learning has traditionally focused on hands-on instruction where students construct personally meaningful artifacts and share them with others. Over the past decade, there has been a surge of interest in how the habits, practices, and tools associated with “making” can benefit teachers and teacher educators (Clapp et al., 2016; Martin, 2015). Rather than perpetuating the century-old industrial model of lecture-based education, making in the classroom serves as a vehicle to support student-centered instructional practices where learners are creators rather than consumers of knowledge.

Grounded in constructionism , a learning theory that suggests that the most effective learning experiences emerge through the active construction of objects that are both personally and socially meaningful (Papert, 1991), educators who enact these maker-centered practices recognize that “knowledge is not simply transmitted from teacher to student, but actively constructed in the mind of the learner” (Kafai & Resnick, 1996, p. 1).

To support maker-centered learning, K-12 schools, colleges, and universities have been adding makerspaces that serve as a communal space where “makers” can share tools and resources while also collaborating as part of a maker community (Mersand, 2021). While making is often associated with high-tech tools such as 3D printers and laser cutters, makers also express themselves through no-tech and low-tech forms of making such as baking, knitting, carpentry, metalworking, glass blowing, and other creative endeavors. Makerspaces in K-12 education globally come in a wide variety of forms ranging from a corner for making in the library, repurposed computer labs and shop classes, to mobile makerspaces that can travel from school to school in buses or recreational vehicles.

However, in 2020, the adoption of these maker-centered educational innovations came to a grinding halt globally due to the sudden closing of schools and shift to remote teaching. As a result, the educational innovations associated with maker-centered learning were placed aside as teacher educators resorted to established curricula as they struggled to cope and adapt to online teaching. Thus, if teacher educators hope for maker-centered learning to continue as an educational innovation, they must find a way to transform these traditionally hands-on pedagogical practices to fit a virtual and hyflex world.

This chapter illustrates the transformation of a maker education initiative, led by an instructional technology coach at a southeastern university. Based on the methods, strategies, and examples presented in this chapter, the authors intend to share successful strategies and experiences to better support maker practices and pedagogies across virtual and hyflex contexts.

2 Methods

This chapter adopts a case study method (Yin, 2011). The first two authors are the researchers of the current study and have an established body of work studying K-12 maker education. They interviewed and collected artifacts from an instructional technology coach who is the leader of the maker education initiative at a teacher education program in a southeastern public university. The third author, Helen Maddox, is the instructional technology coach who was interviewed by the other two authors. She has been leading the maker education initiative at her college for over 3 years. She identifies herself as a maker/crafter and has enjoyed maker activities, such as taking apart rotary telephones and televisions, ever since she was a child. Helen has a computer science degree; therefore, she has a lot of experience with computational concepts and coding. In the past, she worked as a computer consultant in the private sector. She also loves to explore different tools and technology while thinking about how to integrate them into education. Later, she changed her career path and worked as a K-12 technology support specialist for 10 years before transitioning to her current role as an instructional technology coach in a teacher education program, which she has been working for the past 8 years.

Three years ago, Helen advocated for starting a maker education initiative in her teacher education program because of her strong personal interests, the increasing popularity of maker education, and inspirations from social media. She is in charge of leading and managing the makerspace and its resources and materials, supervising undergraduate student assistants, offering coaching and consultation to teacher educators who are interested in integrating maker education into their curricula and providing professional development sessions to pre-service and in-service teachers. Besides these activities, she also operates an open house of the makerspace for faculty and students to explore and make and hosts themed maker activities from time to time. During the year before the pandemic, more than 1200 educational stakeholders visited the makerspace and participated in the professional development sessions hosted by Helen and her student assistants.

However, in March 2020, the university canceled all in-person classes and activities, including any scheduled making sessions. All academic courses were required to transition to online learning. The majority of teacher and teacher educators had rarely taught entirely online before, which caused them to fall back on established curricula instead of introducing innovative practices into their courses. Therefore, maker education was somehow left out of the online curricula. Instead, there emerged a strong need to prepare professional development, coaching, and consultation on online learning for faculty members and students. As the instructional technology coach of the college, Helen was the ideal person to offer this instructional support. Thus, she joined the technology team and spent hundreds of hours developing and delivering professional development (PD) to faculty, teacher candidates, and in-service teachers from March to May 2020. During this time, Helen did not have the time or personal bandwidth to promote her maker initiative due to the emergency demand, the shift in her focus and job role, and resistance from overwhelmed faculty.

3 Findings

To continue the push for the integration of educational innovations during the pandemic, in particular, maker education, it requires teacher educators to be astute and creative in leveraging virtual platforms to share practices, tools, and resources. Helen designed and implemented (a) two versions of the virtual makerspace tour, (b) a series of virtual making stations, activities, and sessions, and (c) multiple hyflex making sessions with accompanying instructional materials and resources for pre-service and in-service teachers’ different teaching and learning needs. Below is a description of the design process and rationale summarized from the interview data.

Starting in May of 2020, Helen began thinking about how she could adapt her existing makerspace activities to a virtual setting. She had over 3 years of photos and videos archived in cloud storage that she used as a guide for student assistants to set up materials for activities. Prior to the pandemic, there was no plan to share these resources as part of a virtual makerspace tour. These resources, however, became ideal once she committed to creating the virtual experience.

There are many trade-offs when it comes to transferring making to a virtual setting. First, one of the main tenets of constructionism is the social aspect of creating the artifact. Makers usually work as part of a learning community, where they share tools, resources, and expertise. This knowledge sharing is usually not formalized but takes place through ad hoc interactions. Second, making is often resource-intensive. This includes both reusable resources such as programmable robots and microcontrollers, as well as consumable resources such as cardboard, copper tape, and 3D printer filament. While many of these resources are common in makerspaces, most of the high-tech tools associated with making are not commonly found in residential homes. Third, the need to socially distance during the pandemic also meant that both the community and tool sharing aspects of maker-centered learning were difficult to achieve due to health and safety guidelines. Thus, transferring authentic making experiences to a virtual setting can be a challenging task.

At the start of the pandemic, educators from around the globe developed and shared curated lists of resources to help teachers transition to virtual teaching . These curated lists were often compiled as Google Docs or spreadsheets and served as a community space for educators to share, store, and organize lesson plans and other teaching resources. Rather than simply curating a text-based list of maker resources, Helen wanted to create an experience where users could gain a better understanding of making in context. Her multimedia archive allowed her to place visuals at the forefront while trying to recreate the makerspace experience for a virtual audience.

There were several design considerations that Helen kept in mind while creating her virtual makerspace tour. First, the experience needed to look and feel like an actual visit to the makerspace. Visitors needed to be able to see an overview of the entire space while also being able to visit different lab stations that contained maker tools and resources. Second, the virtual tour needed to be multimedia-rich and allow for the embedding of photos, video, and PDF documents. This way Helen could fully leverage and share her multimedia resources. Third, the tour had to be easy to navigate, preferably with a point-and-click interface that could run on all devices. Based on these design considerations, Helen selected ThingLink as her development platform. The creation of the virtual makerspace tour took place over the summer of 2020. During this time, it was Helen’s top priority since she wanted to ensure teachers and teacher candidates had access to the resources at the beginning of the 2020–2021 school year.

3.1 Virtual Makerspace Tours

The physical makerspace that inspired the design of the virtual tour hosts a variety of innovative educational technology tools, such as a 3D printer, laser cutter, and educational robotics (e.g., Bee-Bots, Ozobots, and Sphero). This space also has no- and low-tech tools, such as squishy circuits, drawing tools, and crafting materials. Because of Helen’s expertise, hospitality, and the abundance of the latest educational technology, this makerspace is a highly popular lab in this teacher education program. Furthermore, she frequently receives requests to host in-person tours of the makerspace.

Before the pandemic, this designated makerspace was regularly visited space by educational stakeholders who represented organizations at the local and state level. The flow of makers and visitors suddenly vanished when the university announced the transition to online learning and related pandemic policies on classroom use. Helen quickly realized that the closure of the makerspace caused her maker education initiative to derail.

During summer 2020, Helen brainstormed approaches and went through her multimedia archive to locate the best resources, tools, and instructional materials. With ample digital materials, she got the inspiration to create a hands-on virtual makerspace tour that replicated her physical makerspace. She created two separate virtual tours, one for pre-service teachers focused on Birth-to-K education (https://bit.ly/3y3tVMx) and a second one for general K-12 education majors (https://bit.ly/3y2B27R). These two virtual tours show the physical space and layout of the makerspace with some themed stations that are set up for maker activities, such as digital storytelling, educational robotics, Lego challenges, virtual reality, 3D Doodlers, and various coding tools. As of October 2021, the Birth-to-K virtual tour has more than 186 visits while the K-12 tour has more than 10,200 visits (see Fig. 16.1). These tours primarily served to introduce pre-service teachers to the tools and resources associated with maker education. Due to the tools being locked on campus, there were limited opportunities for pre-service teachers to enact these practices during this time outside of completely virtual tools, such as the coding language Scratch. However, these virtual tours reach outside the program and disseminate maker education practices to a broader audience. Creating and sharing global makerspaces on similar virtual platforms can facilitate conversations on maker education, even during emergency situations.

Fig. 16.1
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Virtual makerspace tour for K-12 pre-service teachers

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3.2 Virtual Making Sessions

Before the pandemic, Helen frequently reached out to the faculty members and invited them to discuss maker education and its connection to their curricula. To continue the promotion of maker education integration, she decided to transition the making lessons into virtual making sessions. After researching various tools and approaches, she chose to design Bitmoji classrooms for the virtual making sessions because of its affordability of including numerous multimedia resources on the same page. These Bitmoji classrooms served as an ideal virtual platform, hosting the instructional materials and resources that could be used before and after the synchronous session. Helen designed a variety of Bitmoji classrooms tailored to specific courses and implemented them virtually, one for Birth-to-K pre-service teachers (https://bit.ly/3y1heC1) and a second one for K-12 pre-service teachers (https://bit.ly/2V3Z7g4). Meanwhile, Helen delivered a professional development session about how to create Bitmoji classrooms to provide content-specific differentiation for the college using Microsoft Teams. She also designed a Wakelet page, which has videos, links, and resources for using Bitmoji classrooms in teaching and learning (https://bit.ly/2V8KOad).

During the pandemic, it was challenging for students to access physical educational robotics, thus, Helen designed and implemented some virtual coding sessions. For example, pre-service teachers used a Bee-Bot Emulator for virtual programming activities. Then, they brainstormed different ways of merging making into coding activities in the classrooms. She also designed a themed virtual coding session, called The Grinch Hour of Code , for all faculty, staff, and students at the college to participate (https://bit.ly/3zxKSzd).

Another example was making props and characters for creating digital storytelling videos at home. According to the learning needs of the courses, Helen designed three types of making and video creation sessions: (a) creating green screen videos, (b) creating stop motion videos, and (c) creating Adobe Spark videos. Some students chose to use their own devices while others checked out iPads from the lab. Pre-service teachers first outlined their storyboards, made their own props and characters using household materials, and then created their videos following the instructions Helen gave through the Microsoft Teams meetings. The projects that students worked on included animations, book trailers, and the retelling of social studies and children’s stories. For these virtual making sessions, Helen collaborated with the teacher educators on designing and implementing rubrics to assess students’ performance . Collectively sharing these innovative strategies and opportunities of publicly available virtual making sessions can also benefit the global maker community.

3.3 Hyflex Making Classes

To ensure every student had access to the making activities/projects in their courses, Helen designed and implemented some hyflex making sessions. One example is the Finger Capes Maker Project for pre-service teachers who took the Birth-to-K literacy methods course. During this project, Helen and the course instructor designed and co-taught some Hyflex sessions together with an in-the-makerspace experience for the students. Face-to-face and virtual pre-service teachers made their finger capes at the same time. During the walkthrough, some pre-service teachers shared their designs and talked about the symbols on the capes and their meaning either in the classroom or virtually. A second example is a lesson to support Social Emotional Learning. Students learned that a storm had gone through the park and opened conversations about fear, loss, and support. During class, students in the lab used Duplos and a build card to rebuild their ride, and online students were asked to build using either physical Lego bricks from home/daycare or with virtual bricks via the Lego Duplo App.

A third example is the Avatar Graduation Ceremony Project. Helen collaborated with the course instructor and designed a hyflex making session focusing on the connections between design thinking and performance arts. Using Lego STEAM Park sets and other materials, students made a graduation ceremony for the avatars. Face-to-face students used online chat tools to discuss with virtual students. Collaboratively, they assigned different roles for themselves, such as scriptwriting, composer, stage builder, puppeteer, and presenter. At the end of the project, students presented together by sharing their screens. The song was played about graduation and students read their scripts to create an online performance. Other hyflex making sessions were coding with physical Bee-Bots or Bee-Bots Emulators and various Lego challenges.

Based on the success of these sessions and perceived future needs, Helen has committed herself to preparing teacher candidates and educators to adopt hyflex making in the classroom. She recognized the affordances of both physical and virtual making and plans to bring this narrative to her maker education initiative, which should be a goal for global maker educators. Additionally, she began advocating for the industry to create more digital tools to accompany the physical education technologies, which might be more convenient and suitable for virtual making. These practices can prove maker education across international educational settings.

4 Lessons Learned

Throughout the pandemic, Helen exhibited resilience and persistence in pushing her maker education initiative forward. These innovative practices contribute immensely to the continuation of the maker education initiative. Thus, based on these findings, the authors have included the following discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of virtual making.

4.1 Advantages of Virtual Making

The advantages of virtual making include the potential to improve access and equity, increase participation, broaden the dissemination and integration of making, advance computational literacy, and promote innovated pedagogy and assessment tools. Because of maker education’s hands-on and collaborative nature, it is highly dependent on physical spaces, tools, and materials. The division between people who have access to these resources demonstrates a big gap in the learning outcomes concerning the integration of maker education. Therefore, international educators need to spend more time and energy when seeking practical solutions to deal with the issues brought by the digital divide. Designing virtual tours and making sessions is one approach to address this issue that provides more flexibility in time and space related to when and how to offer the making sessions. Virtual designs also lower the thresholds of joining the making community, resulting in more participation and broader dissemination of maker education integration. The authors envision that virtual learning will stay even after the pandemic, so it is crucial to continue to design virtual making experiences that ensure access and equity. It is also imperative to include the narrative of access and equity into the professional learning of maker education integration when preparing our pre-service and in-service teachers.

Another advantage of having virtual making sessions is that this creative approach positively promotes computational literacy and the use of innovative pedagogy and assessment tools. The use of these virtual technology tools for maker education integration help advance pre-service and in-service teachers’ computational literacy, which might transfer into the cultivation of K-12 students’ computational literacy. Similarly, modeling the use of innovative pedagogy and assessment tools facilitates pre-service and in-service teachers’ future use of these pedagogy and assessment tools. The authors recommend other teacher education programs across the globe considering designing and implementing some virtual making sessions that will cultivate pre-service and in-service teachers’ computational literacy . By doing so, it will prepare them to use more innovative pedagogy and assessment tools as part of their teaching practices.

4.2 Disadvantages of Virtual Making

The disadvantages of virtual making include issues related to reinforcing equity issues, limited hands-on collaboration, a lack of virtual tools, and few established pedagogical practices and assessment tools. Equity issues with making are often due to a lack of materials and resources at home. While most students have access to no-tech maker materials such as cardboard, paper, and cereal boxes, few have high-tech digital fabrication tools such as 3D printers and laser cutters. This further exacerbates the digital divide and can lead to inequivalent experiences across social classes. Equity issues also impact the type of device that the student is using to engage in virtual making sessions. Students participating in video conferences on their phones might have more difficulties seeing the instructions. The authors recommend that virtual making tools and resources should be designed for a wide variety of devices to ensure all students can have an equitable experience.

Maker activities often thrive on their collaborative hands-on nature. In contrast, the virtual makerspace tour does not capture the joy and excitement of people making. The authors recommend that the designers and developers of maker tools should think about how the tools can be used across both in-person and virtual environments. Designers of hands-on maker tools should work towards developing digital simulations that allow global students to co-create, while also supporting communication and critical thinking skills.

Lastly, practitioners and researchers need to continue to learn more about how maker-centered learning can be supported online. While the previous decade saw a deluge of in-person maker pedagogical practices, there has been very little development of maker pedagogies that currently transfer to the virtual environment. Additionally, the authors recommend the development of new assessment tools that can measure the most effective maker practices. These assessment tools can be built into virtual maker activities and improved upon following a design-based research approach.