“MakerSpace in university science education: Learning the art of creating, innovating, and collaborating”

MakerSpace is an active learning, independent thinking, hands-on, and creative environment to facilitate practical solutions to open-ended problems. It involves product design through collaborative learning, enhances problem solving skills, innovation, and self-expression. It instills creativity and confidence in students to meet the challenges in their careers. This presentation will discuss the importance of providing a MakerSpace environment in Physics, show what is involved to run it, and describe how the learning outcomes are achieved. Typically, a MakerSpace employs specialist staff, contain 3D printers, computers, access to other specialized tools and offers facilities to conduct coursework, individual and collaborative projects. Our approach involves a variation, making use of existing faculty and staff support, a dedicated MakerSpace area, and incorporating learning within an undergraduate laboratory course that focuses on digital electronics and modern day physics problems. We will also share the experiences of our recent students. We view our MakerSpace to be a hub where undergraduates and graduates have the opportunity to collaborate on projects, develop cross-disciplinary skills along with sharing unique learning experiences. In future we anticipate enhancing the use of the MakerSpace by creating a new Advanced Industrial Physics Project course, in which participating students will be selected through the Western Science Internship program to work on projects related to selected industrial partners