We are very pleased to announce that we’ve received a Faculty Career Enhancement grant from the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) to create a makerspace for engaged learning on campus.

Here’s an excerpt from our proposal:

In higher education, the challenge is to move students toward ever-greater intellectual autonomy and self-confidence. The traditional college model of learning through lecture, however, neither allows students experiential, hands-on learning, nor nurtures initiative. Students need curricular opportunities to move from passive receivers of information, to engaged producers and creators.

This project aims to address these issues by installing a makerspace at the Lawrence University library as a resource to innovate teaching and learning across the ACM through the integration of maker pedagogies into course offerings and course design.

A makerspace is any space that contains technologies and tools to allow for creative design and experimentation. Maker pedagogies are the methods that instructors use to integrate the makerspace into teaching and learning. Libraries and educational institutions all over the world have welcomed makerspaces as an innovative intersection of technology, learning, and experimentation.

Read more at the ACM website.

The plan is to spend summer and fall setting up and developing teaching strategies and workflows, and begin using the space with classes in Winter term 2016.

This website will be updated as we set up the space and create content. We will use this site as a way to share assignments, instructions, procedures, patterns for 3D objects, pictures, and more.

We are very excited about this opportunity provided to Lawrence University students by the ACM, and are looking forward to sharing what we learn!