hello! I am Gabrielle and I am Sam, and we are from the University of Washington and
the University of California, Santa Barbara, and we work with prof Nadya and prof Jennifer
respectively, and we are presenting our paper REMOTE LEARNERS HOME MAKERS, how digital fabrication
was taught during a pandemic!
Digital fabrication courses that relied on physical makerspaces were severely disrupted
by COVID-19. As universities shut down in Spring 2020, instructors had developed new
models to teach digital fabrication at a distance.
We were interested in better understanding how these instructors adapted their courses
to a remote format. Specifically, our questions were:
How did people teach digital fabrication remotely during the pandemic?
And two, how can we learn from instructors’ efforts to teach digital fabrication in a
crisis?
To examine these questions, we relied on two datasets:
Autobiographical data from Jennifer’s and Nadya’s remote fabrication courses taught
in the spring of 2020, and external interviews with instructors and students at 8 different
universities. We decided to incorporate autobiographical data because Jennifer and Nadya’s courses
used an instruction model that was not present in our external data. Specifically they used
an at-home machines instruction model.
Through these interviews and examination of course materials, we identified 4 other fabrication
access models: simulation, online-vendors, makerspace-to-jobshop, and instructor or student-technicians.
You can find a detailed description of each fabrication model in the paper.
In our data analysis, we organized our findings along 4 main themes:
Number one. The remote instruction formats created new forms of at-home labor for both
instructors and students. For instance, some students and instructors worked as fabrication
technicians for their peers or their students, which meant they took on extra tasks such
as monitoring production or delivering parts.
Number two. Alternative models of personal fabrication surfaced new learning opportunities
for students. For example, courses that relied on an online-vendor or student-technician
fabrication model could more easily simulate the multi-party design workflows that exist
in industry.
Number Three. While the tacit knowledge that comes with a physical making practice was
valued by all the instructors we interviewed, the ways in which this knowledge was transmitted
remotely varied. For example, art classes such as Ben Light’s Subtraction at NYU ITP
encouraged students to develop experimental making practices. However, the engineering
course Me102 taught by Mark Cutkosky at Stanford focused on mastering CAD software to make
parts that would later be manufactured by an online vendor.
Number 4. The absence of a fabrication space created significant shifts in patterns of
collaboration. For example, in Vivek, Adam, and George’s class, Design Innovation at
Berkeley, the student who received the parts from the online-vendor and assembled the final
project was often the student with the most prior fabrication experience.
Analysis of our findings yielded the following insights:
Number one. The courses’ learning objectives had a great impact on which tacit elements
of digital fabrication were transmitted to students, which stresses the importance of
articulating course objectives and structure over access to fabrication spaces.
Number two. Regardless of the fabrication model chosen by instructors, providing students
with opportunities for exploration and iteration yielded the strongest learning outcomes, rather
than a focus on access to tools and materials alone.
Finally, the remote learning format of the courses we surveyed exacerbated inequalities
among students in terms of access to both human and material resources. Instructors
play a crucial role in how access to resources is managed. By being specific about what the
learning objectives are, they can make better decisions about what material resources are
needed and how best to distribute them.
We hope that this research will hold sustainable and equitable opportunities for students to
have hands-on learning experiences, even if those learning opportunities need to happen
at a safe distance.
Thank you for listening to this presentation. If you want to learn more, please go ahead
and read the paper!
Thank you!