The State of Making Report highlights the work of 40 of the higher education institutions active in the MakeSchools Alliance movement, with principal findings organized around six themes:
· Defining “Maker Culture” in higher education;
· Fostering Maker Culture on campus;
· Approaches to Maker education;
· Resources: Makerspaces and tools;
· Community engagement and partnerships; and,
· Successes: value, impact and benefit.
The student Maker experience on American college campuses is driven largely by creativity and doing, with students becoming increasingly involved in hands-on activities with an outward focus – pairing practical learning with purposeful outcomes, according to the report. While most Maker education experiences are typically based in engineering programs, cross-disciplinary collaborations grounded in complex, real-world problem solving are also common. As campuses invest in new spaces, curricula, and partnerships to foster a Maker Culture, more transparency and shared approaches to policy and maintenance are seen as a key need.
For the full report: http://make.xsead.cmu.edu/week_of_making/report