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Makerspaces, intended for open and collaborative learning, often struggle to attract a diverse group of users, particularly concerning gender diversity. These issues include makerspaces becoming associated primarily with white male students, gendered connotations of machines and materials, and women’s perceived lack of self-efficacy in using makerspace tools. As a result, women may view makerspaces as unwelcoming, and societal stereotypes can affect their engagement in these spaces. Efforts to create more inclusive makerspaces are essential to fully realize the potential of makerspaces, encourage and boost confidence in marginalized groups to pursue careers in different engineering areas, and promote a diverse and collaborative maker culture. Moreover, defining makerspaces is challenging due to conflicting perceptions, the uniqueness of spaces, and the abstract elements in these environments, revealing a gap between academic definitions and the diverse voices of people interested in utilizing makerspaces. Our goal is to see if there are differences in the fundamental academic makerspace definition and makerspace definition by different genders, providing insights into how inclusive our makerspace is. We focus on gender because our interviewees focused more on gender than other identity markers in our conversations, but we also report additional demographic data that likely impacted participants’ experiences, namely, their racial and ethnic identities. Our corpus is drawn from semi-structured interviews with students enrolled in an introductory first-year engineering course. Out of 28 students interviewed, 10 identified as women, 16 as men, one as both women and questioning or unsure, and one as women and nonbinary and transgender. In terms of racial/ethnic identifications, nine participants identified as White or Caucasian; six identified as Latinx or Hispanic; five identified as Latinx or Hispanic, White or Caucasian; three identified as Black or African American; two identified as Asian, Desi, or Asian American; one identified as Latinx or Hispanic, Native American or Alaska Native; one identified as Southwest Asian, Middle Eastern, or North African, White or Caucasian; and one identified as Native African. In this ongoing study, from interview transcripts, we extracted participant responses to questions regarding their definitions of and impressions of makerspaces to identify commonalities and differences. Specifically, we use natural language processing techniques to extract word frequency and centrality and synthesize commonalities into a shared definition of a makerspace. We also separated responses from participants by gender identities to evaluate how definitions varied with gender. These emergent definitions are compared with commonly accepted definitions derived from research papers. Additionally, we conduct a complementary discourse analysis of students’ definitions and impressions of makerspaces, qualitatively examining how diverse students characterize ways of being and doing in the makerspace. 

Engineering identity development is crucial for engineers’ professional performance, personal fulfillment, and organization’s success. Various factors including recognition by others, interest, and competence can affect the development of engineering identity. Participation in engineering-related activities, such as involvement in makerspaces, can lead to increases in engineering self-efficacy and can provide opportunities for students’ to be recognized as engineers, potentially promoting the development of their engineering identity. However, participation in makerspaces is not necessarily equal across all student groups, with the potential for white, man-dominated cultures of engineering to be replicated in makerspaces, preventing students from marginalized groups from feeling welcome or participating. Earning microcredentials and digital badges in makerspaces has the potential to encourage participation and provide a means for recognition. The goal of this two-year project (funded by NSF’s PFE: Research Initiation in Engineering Formation program) is to study engineering students’ engineering identity development and how makerspaces and digital badges can contribute to this development process. Towards this goal, we interviewed a diverse cohort of eight first-year engineering students at a large, land-grant, Hispanic-Serving Institution in the U.S. during the Fall 2022 semester. Students participated in two one-hour interviews at the start and end of the semester on topics including their making skills, experiences in the makerspace, participation level in groups, perceived recognition as engineers, and feeling of belongingness in the engineering community and makerspaces. This paper presents lessons-learned from the interview implementation process, including dealing with disruptions from the ongoing pandemic and traumatic campus events. We also present emerging themes from qualitative analysis of the interviews. We expect the implications of this work to guide instructors and administrators in developing more motivating and interactive engineering courses and makerspace experiences for diverse students.