Board 243: Development and Validation of Learning Through Making Instrument (LMI) Project Overview
- Conference
- Location
-
Portland, Oregon
- Publication Date
-
June 23, 2024
- Start Date
-
June 23, 2024
- End Date
-
July 12, 2024
- Conference Session
- Tagged Topics
-
Diversity and NSF Grantees Poster Session
- Page Count
-
10
- Permanent URL
-
https://peer.asee.org/46814
Paper Authors
Leonardo Pollettini Marcos Purdue University
Leonardo Pollettini Marcos is a 3rd-year PhD student at Purdue University's engineering education program. He completed a bachelor's and a master's degree in Materials Engineering at the Federal University of Sao Carlos, Brazil. His research interests are in assessment instruments and engineering accreditation processes.
Julie S Linsey Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Julie S. Linsey is a Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technological. Her research focus is on design methods, theory, and engineering education with a particular focus on innovation and conceptual design.
Melissa Wood Aleman James Madison University
Dr. Melissa Aleman (Ph.D. University of Iowa) is Professor of Communication Studies at James Madison University and has published research using qualitative interviewing, ethnographic and rhetorical methods to examine communication in diverse contexts. Sh
Robert L. Nagel Carthage College
Dr. Robert Nagel is a Professor and Director of the Department of Engineering at Carthage College. Dr. Nagel, a mechanical engineer by training, performs research on engineering student learning and engagement with a focus on interventions, pedagogies, and design methodologies. He seeks to gain applicable knowledge for increasing student engagement and reducing barriers in engineering, design, and making.
Kerrie A Douglas
Purdue University, West Lafayette
orcid.org/0000-0002-2693-5272
Dr. Douglas is an Associate Professor in the Purdue School of Engineering Education. Her research is focused on improving methods of assessment in engineering learning environments and supporting engineering students.
Eric Holloway
Purdue University, West Lafayette
orcid.org/0000-0002-0343-1709
Prof. Eric Holloway currently serves as a Professor of Engineering Practice in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University at West Lafayette. He also holds a courtesy faculty appointment in the School of Engineering Education. His research focuses on assessment development and the professional formation of students.
Abstract
Makerspaces are increasingly more important in engineering education because they enable learner-guided experiences related to the process of creating. Many previous studies have investigated the nature of the learning that happens in makerspaces when students engage in the creative process, with factors such as makerspace culture, knowledge, and skills being examined. Currently, though, there are no instruments with evidence of validity and reliability for measuring the learning that happens within makerspaces. Therefore, in this project, we are aiming to create an instrument that can be used within diverse engineering education settings to help institutions assess the impact of makerspaces on their users. In previous NSF-funded projects, part of our team has been able to develop an intimate understanding of academic makerspaces through ethnographic methodologies: who uses the spaces; how they operate; what users are learning; how users are learning. In order to move from qualitative findings into a quantitative instrument, we proposed this four-stage project along with experts in instrument development. The first stage is for developing construct definitions, where we determine what we want our instrument to measure by contrasting our team’s expertise on makerspaces with the existing literature to create theory-informed definitions. From these definitions, we move onto the second stage, where we use those definitions to generate draft items to be used in the survey instrument. Those draft items then go through a review process with experts in both makerspaces and instrument design. Additionally, we recruit students in our target population to participate in think-aloud interviews: interviews where the students go through the instrument and talk out loud about their interpretation and thought process when answering the questions. The interviews allow us to assess if our target population is interpreting the items how we intended. The third stage is to design and conduct validation studies that will allow us to test our hypothesized factor structure and check for evidence of reliability of the instrument. Finally, the fourth stage consists of finalizing the instrument and conducting additional validation studies that examine how our instrument scores are related to fairness. In the end, the goal is to have an instrument that can be used in diverse engineering makerspace settings. At the present moment, we are in the second stage of our project, and we anticipate we will be on the third stage by the time of the conference.
Pollettini Marcos, L., & Linsey, J. S., & Aleman, M. W., & Nagel, R. L., & Douglas, K. A., & Holloway, E. (2024, June), Board 243: Development and Validation of Learning Through Making Instrument (LMI) Project Overview Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/46814
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2024 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015