2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As part of an NSF-REE funded research project, The Engineering Education Maker Identity Project, this research project seeks to study how students’ STEM professional identity was impacted through the inclusion of making and design projects in their courses. The student populations of interest were majoring in engineering, engineering technology, and pre-/in-service STEM teachers. In order to reach this large and diverse group of students, the study needed a sizable and diverse group of faculty members to participate. A call was made to all of the Colleges of Education and of Science and Engineering to reach these student groups, and the resulting faculty participants included Education, Engineering, Engineering Technology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Psychology faculty. As such, a two-semester professional development program was designed for faculty to 1) learn a variety of maker tools, 2) learn instructional strategies to integrate making and design into their teaching, 3) receive mentoring while developing lessons that integrate making and design into their course content, and 4) build a diverse professional learning and research community for maker integration across disciplines. Beyond recruiting faculty to integrate making and design projects, many interested faculty members wanted to learn making techniques and makerspace equipment to facilitate their classes (and for personal curiosity). The first semester (Fall 2017) involved faculty attending three half-day workshops to learn maker tools and instructional strategies to support the integration of making and design. Workshops were held in two makerspace areas, 1) Bobcat Made - the university makerspace and 2) The Make Lab, low-tech mobile makerspace in the College of Education. Upon attending the workshops, faculty were asked to develop a lesson plan that integrated making and design into one of their courses for the following spring. Faculty participated in online forum discussions and received mentoring from program staff throughout this process. The second semester (Spring 2018) involved faculty implementing the lesson into their course that integrated making and design. With support from program staff and makerspace volunteers, each faculty member was able to bring their students to the Bobcat Made makerspace to facilitate their projects. Data collected included faculty lesson plans and student artifacts. This paper describes the procedure and content of these professional development workshops and describes how some of the faculty integrated making projects in their courses.