2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the experiences and interactions of student staff in university makerspaces. Student-run university makerspaces are uniquely primed for curating culture through peer interactions. Student staff in university makerspaces can run trainings, develop programs, and support the student staff hiring process, which ultimately can affect student experience in the maker space. Interactions in university makerspaces can result in increased collaboration, creativity, leadership, and problem solving [1], so understanding the aspects that can affect student experience is important. To understand the student staff’s strengths in makerspaces, this work seeks to answer the research questions:
• What are the assets student staff articulate through their experiences with others in the makerspace?
Researchers interviewed eight student staff members at a university makerspace in the engineering building at a large university. These semi-structured interviews were analyzed using grounded theory techniques and qualitative methods including inductive coding to develop a theoretical framework for interactions among student staff in university maker spaces. This research is part of a larger study to develop a theoretical framework examining the interactions within university makerspaces. The scope of this paper is focused on university makerspace student staff at one university and their assets when discussing their reason for using the makerspace. In the larger study, the theme of Reason for Using Makerspace emerged which includes students first experience in the makerspace, reason for continued interactions with the makerspace, and why they use the makerspace as a student staff member. Within this theme, students discussed their reason for using the makerspace that leveraged modes of Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) including social, resistant, linguistic, navigational, and aspirational [2]. This finding represents a nuanced reason for students to use, or continue using, a makerspace than previously researched reasons for using, including class projects [3] and architecture [4]. Student staff are the brokers of the makerspace, so understanding their reason for using the makerspace is essential to understanding how students use the makerspace. Future work will focus on the continuing to build the theoretical framework for interactions within university makerspaces through continued analysis and data collection from a wide variety of university makerspaces.