Give Them the Platform: Student Led Workshops

4/21/2021

Makerspaces tend to be overwhelmingly male and white. This poster highlights our makerspace’s efforts to shift this narrative by giving our student staff a teaching platform. These workshops highlight that all levels of expertise are valued and accepted and signals that the makerspace is for all students by challenging the typical makerspace curriculum focused on digital fabrication and trendy technologies. It also teaches our student staff to value their own expertise and create innovative practices.

Colin Nickels, NCSU
Malaka Friedman, NCSU

4 Comments

Jennifer

4/23/2021 03:12:17 pm

This looks great! Do you have any plans to add any other student led workshops to this series?

Colin Nickels

4/25/2021 12:12:47 pm

Thanks for the question. In short, yes! We intend to continue developing this workshop series. During the pandemic things have slowed down a bit and each workshop it taking more effort to create, but we in the fall we are hoping to continue to expand this. We'd like to do one or two a semester for the foreseeable future.

Susan Montgomery

4/26/2021 05:40:29 pm

Very cool idea. How do you recruit students to lead and or create a workshop? Are there any groups on campus or the community you could partner with?

Malaka Friedman

4/27/2021 11:17:10 am

Thank you for the question Susan! The students we recruit are student staff from our makerspace. We discuss with them the possibility of leading a workshop in an area that they are interested in when they are hired. Then we work with them to develop that workshop to align with current workshops and best pedagogical practices.

Due to the workshops being more specific, we do attract different groups on campus that otherwise would not be interested in workshops. There is also the Peer Scholars Program with our libraries, that allows graduate and postdoctorate students to teach workshops as well.

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Poster Session 2021