FaBuLoUS: Supporting schools by teaching and learning in FabLabs

The key to integrating formal and informal education
- A joint research project - 

Fablabs, makerspaces, digilabs: all use digital technology to enable creative and practical output. As part of the maker movement, they are spaces for problem solving and mutual technology use. We use the collective term ‘labs’ to describe such spaces and regard them as socio-technical configurations. Labs can be used in cooperation with schools as places of education and are particularly suitable for use as spaces to address the interests and skills of those children and young people who are often disadvantaged in formal education. It is easier in such labs than in schools to provide public access to the latest technology and research.

The following questions are at the heart of this GEI sub-project:

  1. How can educational products be designed for use in Labs, particularly in cooperation with schools and I order to support them.
  2. What happens in FabLabs as post-digital places of education - from the perspective of those involved - and how does failure unfold as a socio-technical and complex phenomenon in this context?

Further information on the overall joint project... (in German)

Further information on the GEI sub-project... (in German)

The project team held a joint conference on 21 and 22 March at the University of Bremen on the topic of ‘Designing the future – children and young people in the Fablab’ (Zukünfte gestalten – Kinder und Jugendliche im FabLab).

Futher information and conference documents, pictures and findings...

  • Aims

    The FaBuLoUS collaborative project believes labs play a key role in the integration of formal and informal education in today’s digital context. The central question is how activities can be co-designed by labs, schools and students, and what transformations result from such cooperative ventures.


  • Methodology

    The development of the potential of labs as non-formal places of education and the acquisition of knowledge about change within these development processes is realised by a participatory Design-Based Research format (DBR). FabLab Bremen e.V. is used for the implementation.

    The project:

    1. designs iterative and participatory learning scenarios in cooperation with selected schools (primary and lower secondary levels), which encourage computational thinking (CT) and support subject-specific curricula,
    2. identifies the informal skills young people bring with them to the labs and develops suitable ways of recognising these informal skills,
    3. formulates design principles that focus on linking informal skills through less-structured, non-formal education opportunities (in the context of formal educational goals),
    4. identifies the organisational conditions for success when schools and labs cooperate, and explores the transformation of professional roles, interpersonal relationships and postdigital practices in these socio-technical configurations.

  • Presentations and lectures (selection)

    Further talks and activities here... (in German)


  • Publications

    • F. Macgilchrist,  Allert, H., Cerratto Pargman, T. et al. 'Designing Postdigital Futures: Which Designs? Whose Futures?' In Postdigit Sci Educ (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00389-y (open access)

      Poltze, Katharina; Demuth, Karin; Eke, Sabrin; Moebus, Antje; Macgilchrist, Felicitas, (2022): 'Erfahrungen des Partizipierens. Reflexionen zu partizipativen Forschungs- und Gestaltungsprozessen'. In Bildungsforschung 2022(2). 1-14. https://doi.org/10.25539/bildungsforschung.v0i2.900 (open access)


Project Team

  • Felicitas Macgilchrist | Project Head
  • Katharina Poltze | Research Fellow

  • Further Project Information

    Department

    Duration

    • 2020-2023

    Funding

    • Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) - in the framework of funding for the programme 'Designing education processes for the digital world' (Gestaltung von Bildungsprozessen unter den Bedingungen des digitalen Wandels) (Digitalisierung II)

    Partners


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