2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The following evidence-based practice study investigates the impact of utilizing a makerspace on the exposure to additive manufacturing and three-dimensional modeling practices to first-year students. Recent literature demonstrated statistically significant gains across factors such as: design self-efficacy, technology self-efficacy, innovation orientation, innovation self-efficacy, sense of belonging within the makerspace, and sense of belonging within the engineering community for courses that included a visit to the makerspace. Furthermore, one recent study looked at the data through the lens of year, gender, and race of the students demonstrating gaps in each [1]. This paper will explore how one university’s inclusion of a brand-new makerspace influences the first-year students’ comfort with additive manufacturing and three-dimensional modeling through both individual and group projects. The analysis will also include breakdowns by gender and race. Furthermore, this paper will investigate the role that each type of project had on the students’ comfort with additive manufacturing and three-dimensional modeling.

The study is currently being conducted at a medium-sized, private, Midwestern, residential university and analyzes the response of students in the First-Year Engineering Program in Fall 2022. With the creation of a new Engineering Innovation Hub (EIH), the university sought to immerse the first-year students into the new space through three experiences. The first was a tour and safety training of the space during a class period. The next experience was a group project, which was an iterative design project that required the students to create and 3D print a Computer-Aided Design model of a valve that controls the flow of water with a servo motor. The students tested the valves and redesigned the valve in a second iteration. The third experience was an individual project that required students to create an object that met a user-defined set of requirements. The object had to be created either with the manufacturing/fabrication, additive manufacturing, laser cutting, or waterjet cutting capabilities of the EIH.

The study’s analysis is based on three surveys. The first survey occurred at the start of the academic year, the second at the middle of the fall semester (after the first iteration of the group project and before the individual project began), and the third survey will be administered at the end of the fall semester. The initial survey asked for students’ comfort with the topics of additive manufacturing and three-dimensional modeling along with the resources available at the student’s high school. The second survey asked the same questions related to comfort with additive manufacturing and three-dimensional modeling. The end of the semester survey will ask the same questions as the second survey, but also include questions about the accessibility to the resources in the EIH, the amount of interaction between the course and the EIH, the likelihood that they would use the EIH again, and an open-ended question related to the positive elements/areas of improvement for the EIH. These surveys will result in both quantitative and qualitative analysis, and the common question between the three surveys will be used to explore the change in student comfort with additive manufacturing and three-dimensional modeling as a product of the three exposures within the course. Furthermore, the timing of the second survey was purposeful to gain insights into how the comfort levels towards additive manufacturing and three-dimensional modeling changed initially through only a group project and then secondly through both a group and individual project. The data will also be broken down by gender and race to determine if any gaps exist in student comfort with additive manufacturing and three-dimensional modeling.

[1] Andrews, M.E., Borrego, M. & Boklage, A. (2021) Self-efficacy and belonging: the impact of a university makerspace. International Journal of STEM Education 8, 24.