Matching the Makerlab with ACRL Framework

INTRODUCTION

Makerspaces, which come in all shapes and sizes, exist in multiple manifestations in both the private and public spheres. However, as their proliferation suggests, makerspaces have found a comfortable home in libraries. Whether public or academic, libraries have long been the birthplace of ideas. This spirit of knowledge creation coupled with librarians’ core value of making “all information resources…regardless of technology, format, or methods of delivery…readily, equally, and equitably accessible to all library users” enables makerspaces to thrive in a library setting. The ACRL Framework is the embodiment of the maker spirit, cementing the home of the makerspace on a college campus to belong squarely within the responsibilities of the academic library. We endeavor to use the frames to evaluate the knowledge creation taking place inside of academic library makerspaces.

In 2014, Albertsons Library established the Emerging Technologies and Experiential Learning Division, which oversaw the creation and the ongoing management of the Albertsons Library’s MakerLab. From its inception the Albertsons Library’s MakerLab sought to be a radically inclusive space for Boise State students, staff, and faculty to congregate and create new knowledge using 3D printers, a vinyl cutter, a desktop milling machine, cameras, microphones, a whiteboard wall, a green screen, sewing machines, yarn, and knitting needles. Two principles guide the Albertsons Library’s MakerLab in its programming. First, the MakerLab aims to democratize access to emerging technologies that individuals might otherwise not be able to interact with. Second, the Albertsons Library’s MakerLab is a safe and collaborative space. People visiting the MakerLab are encouraged to recognize and confront bias while also exploring how cross-discipline collaboration can propel projects to the next level. Together, these two principles ground the Albertsons Library’s MakerLab as a place where true innovation flourishes.

As MakerLab programming has matured, evidence of learning at the undergraduate level increased. Self-directed learning transforms into peer-to-peer learning when undergraduate learners in a library makerspace use computer software to prototype a design that they later 3D print, then share that learning with others.

While it was evident that students were learning and acquiring coveted job skills, defining and assessing learning in a makerspace remains difficult. It was only after attending an ACRL Roadshow in the summer of 2018 that this information itch morphed into an inquiry on how and where the ACRL Framework matched with the Albertsons Library’s MakerLab. Our exploration demonstrated the utility and flexibility of the Framework, and nearly cemented our belief that makerspaces and libraries are a natural pairing. In sum, addressing how the ACRL Framework and makerspaces align provides a blueprint for viewing the ways in which makerspaces and emerging technologies support information literacy in higher education.

AUTHORITY IS CONSTRUCTED AND CONTEXTUAL

For each of these sections, we will highlight the ACRL Framework frame title and note examples about how each is situated in an academic library makerspace. In this frame, the central focus is regarding how the creators select information sources based on their information needs, and furthermore, that “Authority is constructed in that various communities may recognize different types of authority.” In a makerspace, the authority is constructed in relation to the communities of learning in the space.

Undergraduate students create new information in their college course work with a variety of levels of expertise. Each has expertise in one particular area, gained in formal or informal educational measures. Everyone participates as an author and creator in a makerspace, as opposed to courses where students think about phenomena.

A content expert in a disciplinary field may lack emerging technology skills, and working together with students that have those skills, they can create new transdisciplinary knowledge that has not yet been discovered. Through the evaluation of information, a user can easily question how one arrived at a product, and in that questioning, utilizing a form of skepticism may actually create a new product or idea or knowledge. As such, “novice learners come to respect the expertise that authority represents while remaining skeptical of the systems that have elevated that authority and the information created by it.”

An Albertsons Library’s MakerLab project highlights ways that the frame helps situate the kind of learning that takes place in academic library makerspaces. This project, [title cite] was authored by Donovan Kay, Anthony Reynolds, and Brian Stone (an undergraduate, graduate student, and faculty, respectively). Together, each had different areas of content expertise and came together to design and create a tactile aid for the visually impaired. Without their individual novice and expert abilities, this project would not have been as successful. The undergraduate, Kay, is the primary creator for this project in that as a novice learner in psychology learning the content, with emerging technology expertise, he hatched the idea to create the project, which they then relied on the specific psychology expertise to complete. Undergraduate students can be authors and creators of works in this way. Kay was aware of when he was developing something new, as opposed to modifying and using someone else’s work, to meet an information need, “This particular model was developed from an earlier model I made that wasn’t quite as useful as I had intended. That model was made from someone else’s. Please follow those breadcrumbs to see from where this project has come!” (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1463604)

Each individual contributes in their own way, within a maker context, as all makers are authors with expertise. As a novice learner of 3D printing, they respected others’ expertise and applied it quickly to the problem they are trying to solve. Makerspace users form teams after assessing the credible authority of individuals in the makerspace.

INFORMATION CREATION AS A PROCESS

New objects, products, and services are both representations of knowledge acquired and are information themselves. A tactile aid is information. It conveys a message and is shared with others, who acquire new knowledge as the result of interacting and using the aid.

Each makerspace user enters an iterative process of “researching, creating, revising, and disseminating” information. Current students must learn to navigate the emerging and traditional knowledge creation processes. Libraries are in a unique position to offer interdisciplinary problem-solving hubs. Makerspaces offer the connection of creating new knowledge through many different disciplinary lenses, “articulate the traditional and emerging processes of information creation and dissemination in a particular discipline.” Makerspace users explore each disciplinary knowledge creation process to decide which best fits the unique problem they are trying to solve.

These users value the appropriate information need with the knowledge creation process. In the case of the tactile aid, each creator and author altered their approach that they made based on the methods of information creation they discovered. They revised the aid based on feedback and available materials. As evidenced in their published poster on this topic, the creators and authors were explicit about their revision process, using feedback from potential users of the device, “We designed and 3D printed (Fig. 1) a set of hands-on tactile models of the normal curve by adapting and improving a preexisting prototype model on the design sharing site Thingiverse.” In this statement, they are aware and showing evidence of their awareness of a variety of aspects of the frames including, though not limited to, Information Creation as a Process and Scholarship as Process.

Makerspaces are interdisciplinary and they capture the emerging processes of information creation and dissemination in all disciplines, often times showing how transdisciplinary work can be accomplished in a library setting. Makerspace users create new information through the products, services, and ideas that they make. They discuss the ways that the choices they make in this process, “impact the purposes for which the information product will be used and the message it conveys.” Making is creating information, and this process of making represents the acceptance of “the ambiguity surrounding the potential value of information creation expressed in emerging formats or nodes.”

INFORMATION HAS VALUE

Makerspace users, once they have created new information, discuss how they want to present that information. They try to decide if the work belongs to them or the university, first – which is a critical component of one’s work as a public employee in that the intellectual property may reside with the public. Then they work to decide if that item ought to be patented, or if it needs to be released open source. Makerspace users tend to release information openly, as the nature of makerspace is to provide open access to resources, and also as evidenced by the profound number of items regularly published on Thingiverse.com, in hopes that it will remove barriers to success in their communities.

When they search for models, they learn how to attribute the credit to the owners and the creators of the original works. Makers work to disseminate knowledge about their work to underrepresented communities to broaden the impact that each emerging technology can have on the improvement of others’ lives. When makers release their new information, they are keenly aware of the value that it will have and learn how to best release it to make the most impact.

RESEARCH AS INQUIRY

Despite the fourth frame of the ACRL Framework reminding us that research is iterative and requires posing increasingly complex questions, there remains in all levels of learning the underlying expectation that students should quickly and efficiently gain competency on concepts on the first try. This belief is often exacerbated by the condensed timeframes of college quarters or semesters, which in and of themselves offer little room for students to stumble when trying to grasp a new concept or theory. However, in observing the Albertsons Library’s MakerLab within the context of the ACRL Framework it became obvious that students within the “maker culture” not only inherently understood the repetitive nature of research, but welcomed blunders, fumbles, and failures. Like Gore-tex repelling water, students in the Albertsons Library’s MakerLab didn’t let failing penetrate — instead it instilled persistence, prompted them to seek help, and honed investigative methods, all of which are key dispositions of the ACRL’s fourth frame. Students engaged with the MakerLab viewed failure not as unintelligence, but a opportunity for analytical and skill-building growth. We feel that this resilient mindset transcends the MakerLab and is something students can apply in their coursework and personal lives.

Another substantial way in which we viewed a direct correlation between the MakerLab and the Framework’s “Research as Inquiry” frame was examining Kay, Reynolds, and Stone’s underlying intent when prototyping tactile aids for teaching statistics to the visually impaired. While the trio’s research benefited the academic world, the project’s aim was to engage in inquiry that better serves an often underserved population. In this way, Kay, Reynolds, and Stone’s work exemplified the fourth frame’s assertion that “the process of inquiry extends beyond the academic world to the community at large, and…may focus upon personal, professional, or societal needs.” Examination of the Albertsons Library’s MakerLab suggests that the palpability of the MakerLab and its tools, coupled with a culture that prides itself on “fail first, learn second” fosters a place where inquiry flourishes and the benefits permeate beyond the academy.

SCHOLARSHIP AS CONVERSATION

Though undergraduates are encouraged to participate in poster presentations or publish in an undergraduate research journal, by and large, they often gravitate to the periphery of the concept of scholarship as conversation. In observing the Albertsons Library’s MakerLab, it became clear that such was not the case for students active with the MakerLab and its equipment. Just as the fifth frame of ACRL Framework suggests, student makers saw “themselves as contributors to scholarship rather than only consumers of it.” Indeed, student makers viewed themselves as producers of information and recognized that they possess the agency to actively contribute to scholarship, instead of being passive bystanders. This credence manifested in students publishing their findings, insights, and innovations on electronic platforms such as YouTube, forums, and websites, which again matched the Framework’s assertions that “new forms of scholarly and research conversations provide more avenues in which a wide variety of individuals may have a voice in the conversation.” Interestingly, in conversations with student makers, we discovered that the platforms where many students are introduced to a specific topic are the same platforms they return to share their findings.

Such a process was the case with Kay, Reynolds, and Stone. Starting with a preexisting prototype model from the design sharing site Thingiverse, they experimented with adding raised bars to their 3D print file to mark standard deviation. However, through experimentation, they found that designing a model with two channels instead of raised bars provided a tactile reference point for calculating statistical proportions of curves. Recognizing, as the ACRL Framework suggests, that “scholarly conversations take place in various venues,” Kay, Reynolds, and Stone contributed to the discussion by sharing their design on a shared open access platform under a Creative Commons license. This allowed others to not only use the haptic tool model but also improve upon it. The group likewise published a poster, which is readily available through Albertsons Library’s institutional repository Scholar Works. Viewed through the lens of the ACRL Framework, the MakerLab provides ample opportunity for students to actively engage in scholarly discourse through new and traditional modes of communication.

SEARCHING AS STRATEGIC EXPLORATION

Though the process of inquiry, discovery, and source section in the MakerLab might appear dramatically different than in the traditional database search sense, using the ACRL Framework to determine competency suggests that the two are more alike than one might think. Just as the act of searching in the traditional sense begins with an overarching question, so too does the search process in the MakerLab. Just as students would peruse different databases until they identify the one that best suits their needs, students in the MakerLab examine the various capabilities of 3D printers, vinyl cutters, and ozobots in order to select the best tool to give physical life to a prototype. And, just as a student writing an economics paper might display creativity and resilience when conducting searches in a catalog, the same behaviors are evident when mechanical engineering students designed and 3D printed wind turbines that were later tested in the Boise State University Engineering Department’s wind tunnel. Moreover, just like business majors might identify organizations and industries that might produce information relevant to their question, students in the MakerLab discovered that nonprofits and government agencies are publishers of .stl files that can be printed. Finally, just as a communications major will demonstrate the sixth frame’s assertion that “information sources vary greatly in content and format and have varying relevance and value, depending on the needs and nature of the search” by examining everything from social media and newspapers to academic journals– so too did Kay, Reynolds, and Stone with the development of their tactile aid, which evolved from pushpins and LEGOS, to using the Lulzbot TAZ 3D printer.

Despite all these similarities, we did observe that in some ways it is easier in the MakerLab for students to understand a need and find a way to fill it. We’ve attributed this key difference to the fact that most information needs that students bring to the MakerLab are physical in nature, which aligns with the inherent tangibility of the MakerLab and its equipment. In this way, the MakerLab provides students with a reference point when they move from strategically searching for the answers “maker” questions to conducting queries in databases.

CONCLUSION

In an ideal makerspace instruction role, library instructors will use a combination of both pedagogical expertise and experience in making. The two are useful together in that one is about working with the phenomena, while the other is more about thinking about working with the phenomena. Makerspaces are ideally situated in libraries where makerspace users may make the most of the framework and the naturally interdisciplinary setting. When makerspace users are creating information, they are doing so in a variety of forms. The way that they create information falls in line with the frames.