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This paper describes preliminary findings from NSF-funded research conducted at the New York Hall of Science with an established after school maker education and social entrepreneurship program called Innovation Institute. Using social entrepreneurship (Peredo & McLean, 2006) and hands–on making activities in a maker space environment, participants address community-focused problems they identify on their own in low-income neighborhoods in Queens,, New York. This project studied whether and how specific aspects of this nine-month, after-school computational making (defined by Rode, et al [2015] as combining computational thinking with skills in aesthetics, creativity, constructing, visualizing multiple representations, and understanding materials) program for 13–17-year-olds from recent immigrant populations may influence participants’ perceptions of the relevance, usefulness and accessibility of computer science and engineering as potential academic and career pathways. 

The purpose of this study is to investigate how different facilitator roles (educator, adult caregiver, peer and self-facilitation) influence children’s learning engagement--specifically, the learning practices of seeking and sharing resources (SSR)--in a museum’s makerspace. We address two research questions: 1). In what ways do learners' engagement vary when facilitated by different facilitator roles? 2). In what ways do different types of facilitators influence SSR practices across age ranges? The results show that facilitation from caregivers and self-directed facilitation is associated with significantly more SSR practices. Additionally, we found that the influence of different types of facilitators on learning engagement varies across ages. Self-directed learning is associated with an increase of SSR as children grow, while facilitation from caregivers is associated with a decline of SSR as children age. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for facilitation in museum makerspace. 

This paper presents findings from a year-long after-school program that engages youth from local communities in computational making and community problem solving. Our goal is to understand how self-directed computational making activities contribute to shifts in students’ self-efficacy and perception of themselves as people who can pursue careers in STEM. During the first, skill-building semester, our preliminary findings suggest that when youth have the opportunity to work through self-directed projects, they engage in a variety of strategies to set goals and work through challenges. We believe that this work contributes to a growing field-wide understanding of novice designers’ problem scoping practices and their nuanced perceptions of challenge.