Researchers support race, gender, and age diverse groups of people to create with maker electronics. These groups include older adults, who are often overlooked as not interested or capable of learning new technologies due to ageist stereotypes. One approach, often involving e-textiles, leverages crafting as a bridge to broaden participation in making. We investigated ways to broaden participation in maker electronics for older adults by remotely co-designing e-textile projects with 6 older adult crafters over the course of 5 workshop sessions for a total of 45 hours. We developed a deeper understanding of their practices, identifying a Planner-Improviser Spectrum for how they approached their craft, and created medium fdelity prototypes. Our design implications draw on our participants’ crafting experience and their experience in the workshop to highlight what e-textile toolkit designers can learn from skilled older adult crafters, such as selecting familiar materials, supporting aesthetic goals, and making electronics more attainable.
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Topic Modeling for Makerspace Artifact Analysis
As the making phenomenon becomes more prevalent, diverse, and vast, it becomes increasingly challenging to identify general temporal or spatial trends in types of making endeavors. Identifying trends in what participants are making is important to makerspace leaders who seek to understand the impact of the making phenomenon on the world or who are interested in broadening participation within their own maker contexts. This paper shows how topic modeling by means of LDA can be used to analyze maker artifacts, and illustrates how these types of insights can be used to make inferences about the making phenomenon, as well as to inform efforts to broaden participation.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1723744
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10301705
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The International FLAIRS Conference Proceedings
- Volume:
- 34
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2334-0762
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Emerging methods for participatory algorithm design have proposed collecting and aggregating individual stakeholders’ preferences to create algorithmic systems that account for those stakeholders’ values. Drawing on two years of research across two public school districts in the United States, we study how families and school districts use students’ preferences for schools to meet their goals in the context of algorithmic student assignment systems. We find that the design of the preference language, i.e. the structure in which participants must express their needs and goals to the decision-maker, shapes the opportunities for meaningful participation. We define three properties of preference languages – expressiveness, cost, and collectivism – and discuss how these factors shape who is able to participate, and the extent to which they are able to effectively communicate their needs to the decision-maker. Reflecting on these findings, we offer implications and paths forward for researchers and practitioners who are considering applying a preference-based model for participation in algorithmic decision making.more » « less
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Abstract Background Learning to be an engineer means learning to participate in engineering discourse: the words, visuals, routines, and narratives through which engineers think and communicate. An important goal for engineering education is uncovering the processes by which young people take up and become fluent in engineering discourse, and how teachers and mentors can aid them in this process. Growing evidence suggests that participation in out‐of‐school maker activities—a class of informal design and build activities—holds promise to help youth gain interest and skill in engineering design.
Purpose/Hypothesis This study investigates how youth learn engineering design through participation in a maker club. It is theoretically grounded in Sfard's (2008) commognition framework, an approach that views learning to be an engineer as learning to participate in engineering discourse.
Design/Method The study employed case study methods of interaction analysis of video‐recorded observations. The analysis closely examines interactions to uncover the mechanisms of discourse development.
Results Findings showed that a newcomer to the discourse could show substantive growth within a single work session. The analysis examined how the youth and a mentor collaborated within a hands‐on learning environment to create opportunities for discourse development. Such growth is not inevitable as seen in an analysis of a missed opportunity.
Conclusions This article shows that making can be a fruitful context for the development of engineering discourse, and it illustrates mechanisms through which that learning can occur, including explorative imitation of engineering discourse routines within hands‐on learning environments. It shows that professional engineers can play an important role in youth learning.
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.32473/flairs.v34i1.128699
