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Creating Maker Culture in an Engineering Technology Program*

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Creating Maker Culture in an Engineering Technology Program* International Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 712±720, 2021 0949-149X/91 $3.00+0.00 Printed in Great Britain # 2021 TEMPUS Publications. Creating Maker Culture in an Engineering Technology Program* WEI ZHAN1, BYUL HUR1, YONGHUI WANG2, SUXIA CUI3 and BUGRAHAN YALVAC4 1 Department of Engineering Technology & Industrial Distribution, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA. 2 Department of Computer Science, Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, TX 77446, USA. 3 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, TX 77446, USA. 4 Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected], [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Many engineering technology students struggle with theoretical concepts in courses like Control Systems. Maker Culture can provide an attractive option to enhance student learning. In order to help students, Maker Culture was introduced in the Control Systems course in the Electronic Systems Engineering Technology program at Texas A&M University. Laboratories were converted to a makerspace kind of environment. Students proposed their project ideas and worked on their project during laboratory sessions. A Mini-Maker Faire was held at the end of the semester, replacing the traditional project demonstrations and presentations. The most important lesson learned is that a successful implementation requires delicate planning. This paper presents the design of lectures, laboratories, and the course projects to cultivate Maker Culture in an engineering technology program. Evaluation of the effort and analysis of data are discussed. Keywords: Maker Culture; Maker Faire; Engineering Technology; Control Systems 1. Introduction tories, many ET courses have course projects for the purpose of motivating students to apply the Department of Engineering Technology & Indus- theories they learn to solve real-world problems. trial Distribution at Texas A&M University offers There are other efforts such as introducing pro- Bachelor of Science (BS) degrees in several areas of duct development [31] and creating high impact engineering technology (ET). It has been observed learning environment [43] that have been made to many times during outreach or recruiting events motivate students. As one of the attractive ways to that when students and their parents look for enhance student learning [26, 44], Maker Culture is majors, many of them oftentimes are confused by a grassroots movement consisting of mostly tinkers, engineering technology (ET) as a major, which may hobbyists, and engineers, who design and build be mistakenly thought of as an associate degree gadgets while learning by themselves or from one program because many community colleges offer another about software/hardware tools and techni- two-year associate degrees with similar names. The ques [1]. It can provide informal and shared learn- four-year ET programs are also different from ing-by-doing experiences with fun and self- traditional engineering programs. The ET major ful®llment for students [17, 21, 33]. Maker Culture can cause some confusion among potential employ- also allows for the implementation of several stu- ers as well [20, 27]. There has been some debate dent-centered learning options such as active learn- about whether ET should change its name to ing, cooperative learning, peer-led team learning, applied engineering [34]. peer instruction, problem-based learning, chal- Because of their applied nature, it is a common lenge-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and practice for ET programs to focus on hands-on project-based learning [19]. Maker Culture is effec- learning. Courses involving more abstract concepts, tive in enhancing student learning because it such as Control Systems, can be challenging to involves high-level learning of ``analyze, evaluate, teach in ET programs. Majority of ET courses and create'' in addition to the lower levels learning rely on laboratories to reinforce student learning; of ``remember, understand and apply'' in Bloom's however, many cookie-cutter laboratories are more taxonomy [4, 5]. like academic exercises and are not effective. Stu- Maker Faires are events to celebrate Maker dents simply follow the laboratory instructions Culture. There are also smaller scale Maker Faires without understanding the underlying reasons. called Mini-Maker Faires. Millions of people all These laboratories can only provide limited help over the world participated in Maker Faires every for students to make the connection between the year. Unfortunately, in June 2019, Maker Media, abstract concepts taught in the lectures and the the company that organized the Maker Faires laboratory exercises. In addition to the labora- ceased its operations [24]. However, the failure of 712 * Accepted 18 December 2020. Creating Maker Culture in an Engineering Technology Program 713 Maker Media should not stop others to carry on the tioned against the unprepared adoption of Maker Maker Movement. In fact, the interests to use Culture into the educational institutions [38]. The Maker Culture in educational institutions are structural changes and material and pedagogical increasing [15, 18, 35]. There are several commonly resources required to support the adoption of used keywords in Maker Culture: make, design, Maker Culture must be carefully considered [3, tinker, build, Do It Yourself (DIY), Do-It-With- 30]. While exploring the feasibility of using Maker Others (DIWO), learn by making, invent, create, Culture to enhance student learning [40, 44, 45], the and ®x [44], these are all relevant hands-on activities authors learned from their own implementation for ET students. experience that it was challenging to successfully Extensive research work has been carried out in cultivate Maker Culture in ET programs. A pre- the area of Maker Culture [9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 29, 39]. liminary result was presented at the ASEE Annual In recent years, many universities are making aca- Conference in 2020 [45]. demic space available for Maker Culture [12, 18]. The intention of this paper is not about develop- Wilczynski provided a detailed review of maker- ing a new theory for adopting Maker Culture in ET spaces at Arizona State University, Georgia Insti- programs, instead, the focus is on the uniqueness of tute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of ET students and the Control Systems course which Technology, Northwestern University, Rice Uni- requires special attention in the implementation. versity, Stanford University, and Yale University After the initial literature review, the implementa- [42]. Most of these makerspaces are intended for tion of Maker Culture was started in the Fall engineering students; however, makerspaces are not semester of 2019 and has continued in the next a limited to engineering majors. Sheridan et al. dis- few semesters. Each semester, feedback from earlier cussed how makerspaces can be used to help semesters was collected and used in improving the individuals identify problems, build models, learn implementation process. and apply skills, revise ideas, and share knowledge The ®nal project demonstrations and presenta- with others in areas of art, science and engineering tions were planned and organized as a Mini-Maker [36]. A thorough review of the literature in Maker Faire. To qualify as good demonstrations for their Culture was given by Schad and Jones [35]. project, students must show a fair amount of When planning for the implementation of Maker knowledge in design, analysis, fabrication, and Culture in a curriculum, other factors such as testing. In Electronic Systems Engineering Technol- historical inequalities and cultural differences need ogy (ESET) Program within the Department of to be considered as well in addition to the technical Engineering Technology & Industrial Distribution, aspects [7, 19, 28, 38]. Hoople et al. found that the most courses with course projects use about half of presence of experienced practitioners, clear rule of the semester for regular laboratories and only about engagement, and a cultural fostering student crea- seven weeks for their course projects. Given the tivity are critical in student learning in makerspaces time limitation, making a gadget for the Mini- [18]. Maker Faire could be challenging for some lower level courses. 2. Integration of Maker Culture in an ET In Make Culture, people are supposed to learn Curricula many knowledge and skills on their own before they can make gadgets. As students move through the Many researchers concluded that Maker Culture ESET program curricula, they get to know more could provide excellent learning opportunities for and more about designing electronic gadgets. Con- students [2, 6, 15, 22, 23]. Maker Culture helps in trol Systems (ESET 462) is a senior level course. cultivating lifelong learning as well [41]. Large Students typically take this course together with number of presentations at ASEE Maker Sessions their Capstone I. ESET 462 has two pre-requisites: in ASEE Annual meetings are the clear evidence of Electronic Instrumentation and Embedded Sys- interests in using Make Culture in education among tems Software (ESET 369). By the time students engineering majors [8, 11, 32, 37, 46]. take Control Systems, they should have taken most Many aspects of Maker Culture ®t well with of the courses in the ESET curricula. They should course projects in ET courses, and majority of know how to design
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