What is "Making?"

"Making" involves creatively developing a personally meaningful idea, creating, encountering roadblocks, persisting, and experiencing breakthroughs on the way to a final product. STEM-rich making, which is the focus of this program, is centered on the use of scientific tools, processes, and phenomena.

kid using markers, cardboard, and pipe cleaners to construct a device

We frame our activities with engineering "design challenges," where kids are asked to build/make something that can achieve a particular task. You may hear activities like these referred to as "tinkering," as the goal is less about the final product, and more about the efforts to make that happen.

Kids mostly work with "low-tech" everyday materials—cardboard, scissors, glue, batteries and wires, and other things that you would likely find around the house. Kids also have the opportunity to explore high-tech options like coding and robotics.

The Project

Although we are pleased to implement the STEM Mobile Makers program through the Science Education Department in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Cal State Long Beach, we are part of a consortium of four CSU campuses implementing the Mobile Makers program.

Over the past decade, California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) has operated "Mobile Making" as a STEM afterschool program, working with local schools and districts, libraries, and community centers for children in grades 4 through 8. With funding from the National Science Foundation, the program was expanded to 3 additional CSU campuses: Fresno State University, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and California State University, Long Beach.

Each site has implemented the program in different ways, but with the same set of project goals.

To develop and strengthen university-community partnerships.
To employ and engage diverse undergraduate students as near-peer facilitators.
To provide materials, tools, and expertise at community sites.
To engage youth in authentic and meaningful STEM activities.
To incorporate feedback from both participating youth and college students.
To embed the program within existing community structures to address local needs.

Research Efforts

To better understand the program, its challenges, strengths and impacts, all four CSU campuses are conducting research and evaluation related to the implementation of the Mobile Maker program. In addition to developing a deeper understanding of the benefits and impacts of the program on both youth and college student facilitators, �� is also examining questions related to what youth science learning "looks like" during these sessions, girls and caregivers' motivations for participation in these maker sessions, and how these Mobile Maker sessions at local libraries are situated within a (potentially) larger STEM learning ecosystem.