Innovative digital solutions to assess 21st century skills in makerspaces: schools & non-formal Erasmus Project

Project Title

Innovative digital solutions to assess 21st century skills in makerspaces: schools & non-formal

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Research and innovation

Project Summary

As the maker movement is increasingly adopted into K‐12 schools and nonformal makerspaces, students have more opportunities to generate unique, personalized projects and artifacts, such as computer programs, robots, DIY electronics and to develop new competencies and skills.

Digital making technologies if coupled with proper learning methodologies such as suggested by Constructivism (Piaget, 1974) and Constructionism (Papert & Harel, 1991) can provide learning experiences that promote young people’s creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and problem-solving skills, the essential skills necessary in the workplace of the 21st century (21st C Skills).

However, assessment of these higher order skills is not easy, particularly within these open-ended environments where students create unique solution paths to problems, interact with peers, and act in both the physical and digital worlds.

Currently, digital technologies offer novel methods and solutions to assess the 21st century skills and offer insights to learners’ efforts and achievements that become available for both learners and researchers.

Thus, the goal of this project is to provide, pilot and validate novel assessment methods and tools intended to use for the assessment of 21st century skills. The assessment solutions will be piloted in different learning contexts but focused on makerspaces (schools and nonformal ie the makerspaces will be either currently located in Schools or will be nonformal spaces whose programmes engage with School groups). The project partnership will run learning environments that will enable students to act as makers using a wide variety of physical and digital tools through hands-on experiences that emphasize collaboration and creativity following inquiry-based approaches instead of direct instruction of facts and formulas. Teachers and non-formal educators will receive training and will be highly involved in planning and implementing the activities. Finally, the project will report findings and conclusions from implementations and assessments that will take place in 5 schools and 4 non-formal maker spaces in 4 countries.

Participants will be drawn from the 4 partner countries (Ireland, Greece, Sweden and Cyprus) and will be secondary school teachers, nonformal educators and facilitators and students/learners (aged 12-18 years) who use makerspaces. Expected participant numbers:
– Students 250
– Teachers 10
– Facilitators 6
– Schools 9

The planned Outputs are:
O1: A digital solution to assess 21st century skills for teachers and students
O2: Open Educational Resources to help teachers and students to implement the solution available via the project website.
O3: An evaluation report on findings and results from the implementation of the assessment solution in pilots with teachers and students

The main activities will be:
– Design of the digital assessment solution, specific to the needs of makerspaces
– Development of the digital solution
– Development of methodology and resources to help/guide teachers and students
– Training course for teachers & educators
– Pilots in makerspaces currently located in Schools and in nonformal makerspaces who engage with School groups
– Evaluation

The project is expected to promote more effective learning in these makerspaces by enhancing the understanding of learners, their needs and the impact of learning interventions. The assessment methods are expected to improve the scalability of the maker movement in education since they may not only reveal students’ skills developed throughout specific learning activities, but they could also help researchers and teachers/educators design better curricula, pedagogical approaches, and learning resources for makerspaces in schools and nonformal centres.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 298561 Eur

Project Coordinator

THE PROVOST, FELLOWS, FOUNDATION SCHOLARS & THE OTHER MEMBERS OF BOARD OF THE COLLEGE OF THE HOLY & UNDIVIDED TRINITY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH NEAR DUBLIN & Country: IE

Project Partners

• KARLSTADS UNIVERSITET
• DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY
• EUROPAIKO ERGASTIRIO EKPAIDEFTIKIS TECHNOLOGIAS
• TECHNOLOGIKO PANEPISTIMIO KYPROU