Board 189: WIP: Staff Communities of Practice for Makerspace Professional Development

Lindsey Pegram; Maria Christine Palmtag; Anna Engelke

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: Student Division (STDT) Poster Session
Tagged Division: Student Division (STDT)
Page Count: 15
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--42569
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/42569
Download Count: 230

Paper Authors

biography

Lindsey Pegram "Be A Maker (BeAM)" Makerspace in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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My name is Lindsey Pegram, and I am a senior undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I double major in Environmental Health Sciences at the Gilling’s School of Global Public Health and Hispanic Linguistics with a minor in French.
I hope to combine these qualifications in the future to facilitate cross-cultural collaboration between international communities and aid in global, clean-water initiatives. Next year, I will pursue a MS in Environmental Science and Engineering at UNC to collaborate with citizens of Spanish, Portuguese, and French-speaking nations, among others, to improve climate resiliency and water-resource management.

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biography

Maria Christine Palmtag

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I am graduating from the joint biomedical engineering program at UNC Chapel Hill and NC State with a concentration in pharmacoengineering and a minor in chemistry. I have a keen interest in the intersection of medicine and engineering, with a particular focus on infectious diseases. During my time at UNC, I discovered a passion for teaching while working as a Specialist at the UNC BeAM Makerspaces. As a Specialist, I created and led training sessions for staff and patrons, and I also served as a teaching assistant for engineering design courses. I am now preparing to pursue graduate studies in infectious diseases, where I hope to continue my academic and research pursuits.

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Anna Engelke UNC-Chapel Hill / North Carolina State University

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Anna Engelke is the Education Program Manager for the BeAM network of makerspaces at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. Her work focuses on developing makerspace learning environments, including maker course integration, instructional design for tool trainings, and mentor programs for makerspace staff. She is a current doctoral student in the Learning Design + Technology program at NC State University. Her research interests include communities of practice, professional development for students, and makerspace instructional design.

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Abstract

Makerspaces are informal communities of practice where participants engage in hands-on project-based learning and professional skill development. Experienced makerspace mentors, either volunteers or staff, play a critical role in facilitating these communities. University X is a liberal arts and R1 research institution that employs 50-60 undergraduate student staff to support a diverse community of 4,000+ makerspace users. Student staff at Makerspace X are first hired as Program Assistants, but as they gain more experience, can apply to become advanced Program Specialists. Near the end of the 2021 Fall semester, several Program Specialists identified emerging challenges with onboarding new staff. Many were reporting lower levels of confidence with tool operation due to a lack of makerspace access during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. New staff also felt generally isolated from the larger staff community for similar reasons.

Program Specialists worked with full-time staff to propose a solution: launching four Communities of Practice (CoPs) to develop professional skills and community amongst new staff members. CoPs have been successfully used for structured professional development in both teacher education and technology use, two critical skillsets required to work at Makerspace X. Each CoP, facilitated by an experienced student staff member, focused on a different tool domain (3D Printer, Laser Cutter, Textiles, Wood Shop). The four CoP facilitators tackled open-ended projects and discovered skills alongside new staff, disrupting the hierarchical notion of “expertise” in favor of modeling lifelong learning and intellectual humility. They crowdsourced creative designs, investigated new tools together, and collaboratively developed a shared Makerspace X staff identity.

Since the launch of the CoPs in September 2022, full-time staff and Program Specialists have monitored the efficacy of the program through a variety of assessment methods. These methods include pre-/post-cohort participant surveys, qualitative interviews with CoP facilitators, project artifacts from CoP participants, and focus group interviews conducted among CoP participants. Preliminary findings are promising, with an average 40% increase in confidence with relevant professional skills. CoP facilitators have also reported a significant increase in community building and belonging across new staff, as evidenced by the narratives and artifacts they collected from participants. This WIP paper describes the collaborative development process leading up to the Fall 2022 CoP launch, and the initial assessment results from the full Fall 2022/Spring 2023 implementation.

Citation
Format

Pegram, L., & Palmtag, M. C., & Engelke, A. (2023, June), Board 189: WIP: Staff Communities of Practice for Makerspace Professional Development Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42569

TY - CPAPER
AB - Makerspaces are informal communities of practice where participants engage in hands-on project-based learning and professional skill development. Experienced makerspace mentors, either volunteers or staff, play a critical role in facilitating these communities. University X is a liberal arts and R1 research institution that employs 50-60 undergraduate student staff to support a diverse community of 4,000+ makerspace users. Student staff at Makerspace X are first hired as Program Assistants, but as they gain more experience, can apply to become advanced Program Specialists. Near the end of the 2021 Fall semester, several Program Specialists identified emerging challenges with onboarding new staff. Many were reporting lower levels of confidence with tool operation due to a lack of makerspace access during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. New staff also felt generally isolated from the larger staff community for similar reasons.

Program Specialists worked with full-time staff to propose a solution: launching four Communities of Practice (CoPs) to develop professional skills and community amongst new staff members. CoPs have been successfully used for structured professional development in both teacher education and technology use, two critical skillsets required to work at Makerspace X. Each CoP, facilitated by an experienced student staff member, focused on a different tool domain (3D Printer, Laser Cutter, Textiles, Wood Shop). The four CoP facilitators tackled open-ended projects and discovered skills alongside new staff, disrupting the hierarchical notion of “expertise” in favor of modeling lifelong learning and intellectual humility. They crowdsourced creative designs, investigated new tools together, and collaboratively developed a shared Makerspace X staff identity.

Since the launch of the CoPs in September 2022, full-time staff and Program Specialists have monitored the efficacy of the program through a variety of assessment methods. These methods include pre-/post-cohort participant surveys, qualitative interviews with CoP facilitators, project artifacts from CoP participants, and focus group interviews conducted among CoP participants. Preliminary findings are promising, with an average 40% increase in confidence with relevant professional skills. CoP facilitators have also reported a significant increase in community building and belonging across new staff, as evidenced by the narratives and artifacts they collected from participants. This WIP paper describes the collaborative development process leading up to the Fall 2022 CoP launch, and the initial assessment results from the full Fall 2022/Spring 2023 implementation.
AU - Lindsey Pegram
AU - Maria Christine Palmtag
AU - Anna Engelke
CY - Baltimore , Maryland
DA - 2023/06/25
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Board 189: WIP: Staff Communities of Practice for Makerspace Professional Development
UR - https://peer.asee.org/42569
DO - 10.18260/1-2--42569
ER -