NSF INCLUDES Planning Grant: Exploring a Collaborative Model for Broadening Participation in STEM through Digital Fabrication and Making

The Fab Foundation, Boston

Investigators

Abstract

Over the past two decades, thousands of makerspaces, fabrication labs, and digital fabrication spaces have emerged. From libraries and science centers to institutions of higher education, the “Maker Movement” continues to gain momentum and is recognized globally as being at the nexus of technology, innovation, and education. This mounting interest may be in part due to promising findings from extant research. Prevailing studies show meaningful engagement in making and digital fabrication can result in marked positive outcomes in STEM interest and careers, especially in engineering and manufacturing fields. Some studies have also shown that while outcomes are generally positive, there continues to be a diverse community of learners who appear to be under-engaged and or excluded from participation. This planning grant will address this gap by creating and fostering a diverse coalition of organizations to work together, and with their respective networks of influence, to design for and promote innovative, accessible, inclusive, and equitable high-quality STEM learning environments for all learners through the lens of making and digital fabrication. Through a multi-modal, lived cultural experience framework, the coalition hopes to develop a plan for a strategic, coherent and scalable approach that moves the bar significantly forward in addressing equity in STEM. The effort brings together key stakeholders in the Maker, Fab Lab, Digital Fabrication, and STEM Education movements to create a shared vision and action plan that ignites a broader, more inclusive group of stakeholders in education, both formal and informal. The initial cohort of organizations will include the key national and international organizations Citizen Schools, Digital Promise, Fab Foundation, FabLearn, Maker Ed and Nation of Makers to begin the process of creating a shared vision, and communicating that vision throughout their networks to a broader and more diverse community of stakeholders. During the one-year project duration, project partners will leverage existing expertise and networks to work collectively to identify and pioneer effective culturally relevant making practices and policies that increase STEM engagement and success among underrepresented groups. Efforts will be centered on two of the five NSF INCLUDES design elements of collaborative infrastructure: Shared Vision and Leadership and Communication. In tandem with developing a common agenda, the Shared Vision component will include several reinforcing activities: (1) map and analyze relevant current programming, (2) establish a set of agreed upon equity and inclusion specific definitions, (3) identify strategies for recognizing existing funds of knowledge among learners, and (4) develop a strategic plan of action. Reinforcing activities for the Leadership and Communication component will include: (1) the establishment of a collaborative support model and operations protocol, (2) documentation and exchange of practices across organizational programming, and (3) a joint publication/policy white paper on the state of broadening participation in making and digital fabrication contexts. To ground this work, an equity and inclusion workshop will be held for partner organizations to promote shared understanding and collective impact. In addition, intentional connections will be made to the NSF INCLUDES National Network through knowledge, data, and resource sharing, networking, and participation in the online community. If successful, this planning grant has the potential to lay a strong foundation for a future large-scale center, alliance, or network focused on broadening participation in STEM through making and digital fabrication. This planning grant is funded by NSF Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES), a comprehensive national initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in discoveries and innovations by focusing on diversity, inclusion and broadening participation in STEM at scale. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.