 Because I want to make sure Maggie gets as much time as possible. Welcome. I'm Cliff Lynch. I'm the director of the Coalition for networked information and you've joined us for one of the project briefing sessions on the first day of week three of our fall 2020 virtual member meeting. Week three is devoted to developments around technology infrastructure standards and related matters. A couple of logistical things. I want to just mention that with week three we are not only doing live sessions but we've released a number of pre recorded videos and I'd invite you to enjoy those as your time and interest permit. We are recording this session and it will be subsequently available both to meeting attendees and then to the general public. There is closed captioning if you'd like to make use of that. There is also a chat and feel free to use that as we go along. There's a Q&A tool at the bottom of your screen and you can ask questions there will deal with all the questions at the end of the presentation but you can put them in at any time. Mark Hart from CNI will come back at the end of the presentation and moderate the Q&A session. Now let me introduce our speaker, Professor Maggie Mello from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Information Library Science is an excellent professor and is also directing the equity in the making lab. And she's going to report on some preliminary findings from a National Science Foundation funded grant that she received this summer. We're dealing with how to make maker spaces more equitable, more welcoming to a greater diversity of undergraduates and what factors influence this and can improve it. And as with a few other folks in the research enterprise. When she first conceived this project she was dealing with a somewhat different world and has had to go through some very adroit adaptation and will probably say a little bit about that as she goes along to. So I'm delighted to welcome Maggie thanks for joining us and over to you. Awesome thank you so much for that introduction Cliff and once again welcome everyone to the project of reef today, which is entitled investigating the spatial arrangements of maker spaces, and its impact on diverse population. And of course before getting started, I want to extend gratitude to the National Science Foundation for supporting this research program. So an overview of this debrief. There are some key elements that I want to make sure that we cover the first is to provide some context around the project design, and also the current status, what it is looking like at the moment in terms of its kind of early stages of project deployment. And then we'll spend most of our time talking about some of the early preliminary findings. And when I mean early I really want to emphasize that it's pretty preliminary and the project is really in its infancy. And then we'll kind of just round the debrief out by closing by talking about next steps for the project, and then opening it up for questions and answers, which I have allocated about 10 minutes for. Okay, so that's the overview. So in terms of some of the context surrounding the project. Now this research program focuses on this right here. Let me turn on my laser pointer here at the threshold of a maker space. Now, I've been working in or with maker spaces for the past seven years, and it's pretty common to see these behaviors, a certain behavior happening at the threshold. Notice that a student will walk up to the doorstep, look inside, and then in a manner of moments decide it's not for them, and they walk away. Now, for an outsider this behavior may seem pretty trivial or pretty commonplace right someone just walked in and walked away. But as a researcher who has been embedded in maker spaces and other stem rich learning environments, the threshold has become a really generative site for inquiry. As a researcher I'm interested in what's happening in those moments right what everyday life information seeking practices are students, particularly undergraduates in this research program. What decisioning are they making at that moment to decide whether to go in or not. So, as I'm doing this research I recognize that this narrative or these behaviors are not unique to me, but is a behavior that happens across the hundreds of maker spaces across the US. So this research program seeks to understand a couple of major things. The first one is trying to investigate how a maker space, facially communicates to undergraduates, specifically undergraduates from underrepresented communities, who belongs in the maker space and also who doesn't. How can they at the threshold, kind of identify the values of the space, the audience for the space, and also the purpose of the space. That's the major piece of it, getting an understanding of those decisioning. The other bit of it as alluded to is how a space, a maker space is configured spatially to communicate that messaging. And I'm talking about like macro features looking at the technologies in place to also down to the micro features thinking about like the wall color paint to what you hear in the maker space and also what you smell as well, which we'll talk about in a moment. So that's the context governing this research program. Now, pulling us up about like 3000 feet and looking at the project design. This is how the context distills into a research question for this project. So the question is this. Why do marginalized undergraduate populations turn away at the threshold of a university maker space. So there are two or two kind of entry points that we're examining this question. First of course is through the deployment and application of theory. We're looking at from these three knowledge domains from STEM equity at the IS theory everyday life information seeking practices and maker spaces and spatial equity. So this question is really examined through the prism of these theories together but also separately. Now, of course, there's also the project piece of it. What will we be doing for the next five years. So this research program is carved into three different phases. And each phase has an aim, aim one aim to an aim three. And so for this project debris will spend a lot of time on aim one because that is where the project currently is. So I want to talk about the project holistically so we could see the larger kind of puzzle and how these pieces fit together. All right. So the research question right we are trying to examine why students turn away at the threshold of a university maker space. And so the first question that needs examination is, Well, what is the university maker space. So in the first phase of the project, we are interviewing maker space leadership across the UNC system. So there are 17 institutions within this network, and we identified maker space leadership within this network. And we have been interviewing them for two months well interviews are done. We've interviewed them with the intent to figure out and be in conversation with them to answer one question for this phase. So this is one of the defining features of a university maker space. Not only what you see but also what do you smell. What do you hear as well. So that's for phase one, we want to get that baseline understanding of what a university maker space is. So what we did from phase one will then feed into phase two. For phase two we're going to take all of those features after we analyze them, and we are going to build out a virtual reality maker space. And so the intent for this maker space is to provide a consistent baseline for participants to navigate. Now you're now you're, I need to take a step back. What are they navigating. Well, once this virtual reality maker space is built out. We are going to have participants undergraduates from underrepresented communities. We're going to invite them to engage with this VR maker space and think aloud their impressions, their thoughts and their feelings while being in that space. As you can imagine, an undergraduate student, we put on their HTC Vive headset, and then right away they're presented with a maker space that's maybe about 20 feet away. And as they're approaching them, this virtual maker space will prompt them to stop, and then we'll begin asking think aloud protocol questions. What is the maker space, what catches your attention. What do you think happens in this environment. What do you think the values are or the audiences. And so having that data collected from undergraduates experiencing the space line maker space will then in turn offer us insight in regards to how a maker space communicates inclusion and communicates who belongs. And so it'll give us an opportunity for participants at the spot to provide potential design interventions. So we'll also ask them. What is it that is available in a maker space that communicates the sense of inclusion for diverse communities. Also what parts of the maker space don't, and what parts are missing as well. So aim one, aim to will then culminate in aim three, which we then it at UNC Chapel Hill, build out and redesign one of the maker spaces with the data collected and analyze from the first four years of the project. Okay, so that is a very kind of like high level overview of the project. And now what I want to do is spend more time talking about where we're at with the project. In terms of our current status, just to reiterate some points that Cliff made briefly. This is part of an NSF career word, which means it spans for spans across five years. So those three phases will be happening across five years. The director that it is in is an education in human resources. When I said that it is a project in its infancy, it really is the project was awarded in late June, and the project began in early July. And since then we have been able to launch the equity and making lab, which has, which I get to work with two incredible PhD students very brilliant, smart and sharp Kimberly Hirsch and also Laura March. And we have been conducting the interviews and doing data collection and analysis at this moment. And also as Cliff mentioned COVID-19. Wow, what a time to put in an application or to apply for any type of funding right now. I won't spend a lot of time talking about it during this debrief, but I highly encourage you if you're interested to talk about it or have a sounding board I'd be happy to be that person because the application process was different. And yeah, I would love to talk to you more about that if that's of interest. Now a little bit finer point before landing on to the findings. Okay. Thank you. As mentioned, we interviewed maker space leadership within the UNC system. We identify them through purpose, purpose of sampling. So it was a way for us to target specific folks that are in the maker space and also have some connection with this kind of day to day operation. And of course the question we asked them across the board was what are the defining features of a maker space. So out of the 17 institutions, we fortunately were able to chat with 15 of the institutions, and at this current moment we have coded and began to analyze nine of the 15 so once again these findings are still rather, rather early. Now in terms of how the collection and analysis has been unfolding, we have been doing something I haven't done before, collaborative coding. I haven't actually done it before but I have a stellar team and we're working through Max QDA software program would love to chat with folks more if they're interested in that. And since then, since July we have developed a weekly cadence of checking in discussing the memos that we have written as we've been coding and also engaging in discussions around coding codes to collapse to expand and all that. So here we are currently, which is also a long way for me to say that once again these findings are really early. Okay, let's talk about the findings. The first bit I want to talk about are kind of the fundamental findings that were important for this research program. As you remember for the second phase of the project, we are building out and we are environment of a conventional maker space. Now in order to do that, we really needed to have a 360 idea of what folks saw on the space, but also what they could smell, and also what they would hear. Okay, so to prime participants for this question, we started out the interview by saying this. Now I want you to imagine that it's September 2019. So we're pre COVID, and you are at a generic university in North Carolina. And as you're walking around campus you come across a room. And as you get closer to the room, you recognize that it's a maker space. What do you see in the room and how could you tell it is a maker space. And so this question frames the interview guide, but it also helps us to get right away with what their first impressions are. And so in terms of site, almost automatically for all maker space leaders tools were readily available. They saw tools, they saw machine, and also probably to know and surprise. In terms of folks that are working with maker spaces, a 3D printer across the board. And I'll talk more about this because there were a handful of folks that did say that there's a 3D printer, but we're very reluctant to say that one existed in that space. And I'll talk more about that in the next slide. So you saw a lot of tools. And alongside the tools across the board, all nine maker space leaders also noted that people were working or making with the tools available. And that's my dog is very excited about this as well. Okay, hold on one moment, as I, I'm just going to hold on one second. Apologies for that. Okay. And so people are working and making they're seeing the different machines in this space. Now, another interesting thing that came from the data collection was that when asked about the users and also the staff in the space. There was this kind of intentional blurring that maker space leadership was trying to achieve. That is, when I asked them, as someone that's building out the VR environment, how could I tell which person is a student which person is a staff member. Many of them mentioned that they were intentionally trying to blur the two so that blur the two so that they wouldn't have folks wearing a lanyard or a name tag. And so I thought it was a very interesting way for folks to say that they want to communicate inclusion to students by making it look like there isn't a type of like hierarchy happening. And of course for the last bit of what is being seen. Many folks notice that there were projects on display, and the projects ran the gamut from research projects to personal gifts, and of course pop culture products as well. As one of the participants they said they, they mentioned that you want to present projects that give people what they want. I talked a lot about projects from Dr who from Mandalorian right baby Yoda, also known as the child so they had these different elements in terms of what you can see. Now smell, I think this was my favorite question, because it was just so interesting to see, or not to see, but to envision what people would smell in a maker space. The main smell that came up was something that was burning now, not like burning like there is a fire but burning in terms of different materials. So the smell of like a campfire or burning would came up a bunch for folks that worked in a house with a laser cutter, and also the smell of burning plastic. So many folks mentioned the smell of something sweet, like syrup or waffles. And this makes sense, considering that PLA filament for a 3D printer is a byproduct of corn and sugar. So it admits this kind of sweet smell as well. So you smell a lot of burning things in this maker space, and it'll be interesting to kind of try to replicate that in the VR environment or within the space where the VR is taking place. And then the last bit was disinfectant which wasn't quite surprising to see. I also want to sneak in a couple of honorable mentions in terms of smells because I thought they were super kind of interesting. The first one was generic library smell, which for some reason is a very vague phrase but for me I just kind of get exactly what they're saying. The other one is Bojangles. One of the locations was close to a Bojangles so many of the users and students would bring Bojangles into the space so that in a sense created kind of the smell scape of it. And then another participant just was like, it smells like a lot of things. It's project du jour, whatever you're close to or whatever's happening during that day. So that site, that smell, and then the sound, nothing surprising here. You hear a lot of conversation, you hear a bunch of machines, and also you hear sometimes music as well. Okay, so as a PI and as a researcher, these early findings make me really happy. And the reason being is because this is exactly what we need in order to build out the second part of this project. So if we're feeling good or making good progress, this is awesome. But not but, but and there are really other interesting themes that are emerging from the data that are quite surprising to me that I wanted to share right now. So two things that come to mind in terms of the major themes are tension and also affect. Okay, so when we were developing the interview guide for this project. I thought it was a pretty benign. Ask to ask leadership to think about what these defining features are right. What do you see what do you smell what do you hear. But what we were finding was as we were asking them to articulate these different defining features. It was a bit of a tense moment because in the act of defining. They're also extending a value statement that they have personally. I mean, values around what they consider to be making consider values around their pedagogy. So in this spot, there was this kind of tension of like, okay, this is a generic maker space, but I'm also revealing something about myself that I'm articulating at the moment, and it's a little uncomfortable. So for example, with the 3d printers across the board, all nine said that there is a 3d printer in this generic maker space. There are about three participants that wanted me to know that they're qualifying that a bit. So they would say something along the lines of. I see a 3d printer in this maker space, but I also want you to know that a 3d printer doesn't make it a maker space, and that maker spaces can exist without them. So there was a lot of kind of tension around how they were defining the space and how it aligns with them personally. Also, there are moments of tension that arise with the questions that I thought were just super fascinating. Where I asked participants, you know, can you tell me more about the materials or the technologies in the space. And so I remember a participant saying, well, you see 3d printers as a technology, you see a laser cutter, but I also want to be mindful that a needle is a technology paper is a technology as well. So it was very interesting to see this kind of tension emerge when we're prompting maker space leadership to do the work of definition, which I thought was fascinating. And the last bit for the tension piece that goes along with envision envisioning a generic maker space is that participants were toggling between these different domains to create this space that they're talking about. And many times it toggled between their idealized space and a space that they are currently experiencing. So one of the questions in the interview where I feel kind of a tonal shift in the dynamic is where I asked this question. I asked participants, alright, I have an idea of what it looks like in there. I need a better idea of what the users and students look like in there for the VR environment. Can you tell me more about the racial, the gender, the age demographics of the folks in there. And you can kind of feel this moment of like, okay, we're going to talk about race, I suppose we're going to talk about gender. And it's interesting because folks have responded in this way saying, well, in my idealized environment, so in this environment, everyone is diverse. There's a diversity of age, there's diversity of race and gender. But in my experience, that's not what it has been. And so it's interesting to kind of get a sense of how this envisioned space is being created from these different domains that they're pulling from. And so that's the big part of this early finding theme around tension that we're further exploring. And the last finding that I wanted to share has to do with affect. And it's so fascinating to see how affects as a non linguistic force that shapes the way that people move around a place and how they behave is coming up so readily in the findings in the in the data. So, an example of this is, when we asked maker space leaders at the beginning to describe this room that they've recognized as a maker space. Many times they don't start off by naming the different tools or people, but instead they're describing different feelings. So they would say, Oh, I look in the room and it's very open. There are good vibrations. It's bright. It's inviting. And so at times we found ourselves having to retract and re ask the question, but asking for more specificity around. Okay, that's great good vibrations. But what does that look like how could you tell her good vibrations happening in this space. And so that leads to kind of the last bit for the early findings, which is a challenge that I'm kind of excited about. But as we think about this VR environment, not only are we looking to create this 360 emulation of the site sound and smell. But we're also going to try to reflect a set of affects or feelings that are also readily like attributed to a maker space, which I think will be complicated, but I think fun as well. So those are early findings we got our site sent and smell ready to go. These are some emerging things that we wanted to share today in terms of the debris. Now in terms of what happens next, we are going to continue with our coding and analysis portion of phase one. And then we're going to compile a list and then hand it over to horizon productions, which is a local VR development group. And we're going to begin building out the environment. Also last bit that I want to plug in is that we're also looking to recruit a new PhD student into the equity and making lab so if that's you or if you know someone who may be interested please feel free to reach out. And I will say that applications close in two weeks. But I mean if it's an interest of interest, please let me know and be happy to contact you. All right. So, that is it. Thank you again for hanging in there with me with my barking dog brewer who's right here right now, but I'd like to open it up for any questions and answers. Well, questions and I will respond. Terrific. Thank you so much Maggie that was really great. I know we're all waiting with great anticipation for an update to your research and as Cliff points out dogs are always welcome. The floor is now open for questions. We have a little bit of time and can probably fit in a couple of questions here so please type your questions in the q amp a box, and we'll take them now and I also just want to point out that I did put in the chat the link to the equity in the making website which I believe has that posting for the PhD student in there, I believe so if you want more information about that please visit that site. While we're waiting to see what questions we might get from our audience. I was curious to know. Did you detect any distinctions about the kinds of reactions that people had the kinds of descriptors, depending upon where the makerspace was located on campus. Yes, so for this project we specifically focused on makerspaces that were open to all discipline, so it's public facing usually they're in a library and a kind of agnostic disciplinary space like that. Yeah, it did vary we had a couple of makerspace leaders participate that were from the same institution, and it was remarkably different. We had one that had a entrepreneurship makerspace and also one with an art based one and, although they were different and many ways in many ways they overlapped quite consistently. Interesting. Well be curious to see how that plays out as well in your research as you continue to dig into all of this. I see that we're at time now and I want to be mindful and respectful of your time and our attendees time so I'm going to propose now. Bringing the live portion of the presentation, or the public portion to a close, I will turn off the recording and just invite any attendees who are still with us to hang around and raise your hand I'll be happy to turn on your microphone and you can ask a question live or make a comment or just join the conversation. And with that I just really want to express our gratitude to you Maggie for coming and sharing your preliminary preliminary results of this really interesting research and thank you to all of our attendees for spending some time with us here today at CNI we hope to see you back soon. Thanks so much. Thank you.