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During the past decade, many K-12 schools have established makerspaces with 3D printers, digital die cutters, and other fabrication tools. An open-source ecosystem is being developed to facilitate effective use of educational makerspaces. This work is being undertaken under the auspices of the National Technology Leadership Summit coalition, which includes national teacher educator associations in science education (ASTE), educational technology (SITE), engineering education (ITEEA), and mathematics education (AMTE), and the Fab Foundation – a network of more than 2,500 Fabrication Laboratories (Fab Labs). This effort is supported by a National Science Foundation Pathways to Open-Source Ecosystems Phase I planning grant (NSF No. 2229627). 

In this descriptive brief paper about work in progress, two science education university faculty and a post-doctoral researcher share an arts-based assessment developed to investigate students’ understanding of computational thinking. The mark out poetry activity was designed for use in an NSF grant funded mixed methods, multi-partner STEM-C research project. Piloted in an undergraduate science teacher education course at a public university, the assessment is intended for later use with public high school juniors and seniors who are partnering in the grant’s work, and likely have little experience with computational thinking. Collected data has the potential to inform the researchers about changes in participants’ understanding of computational thinking over time, as well as the efficacy of the equity-based grant project. This paper includes instructions for the activity, an example of one undergraduate’s work, and a preliminary analysis of the work of the five students in the pilot. This presentation may inform the work of constituents of technological, teacher education, and K-12 learning communities who want to broaden and deepen their assessment practices with the inclusion of qualitative, arts- and equity-based data collection and analysis. (Funding-NSF Grant 1842342.)