The role of mindmaps and visualizing personal futures to support identity development in informal maker education

Students from the Black and Brown communities have had a long history of underrepresentation in the fields of STEM and computing. Lack of access, resources and political and economic history are only the tip of the iceberg of challenges they face when trying to find their place in these fields. Makerspaces are being recognized as spaces for creating equity in computing due to their focus on computational education through personally relevant, project-based learning. With this format, students from all communities are empowered to learn computing in ways that matter to them and develop their computational identity. In this paper, I investigate what it means to develop computational identity, what components of computational identity can be impacted in a makerspace, and what makerspace design decisions can have a positive impact on the students’ computational maker identities. Further, I dive into two components of computational identity: interest/motivation and utility value/meaningfulness, to explore how mindmapping and brainstorming activities framed in prior identities, interests, and future communities, can empower students to build personally relevant projects lending to computational empowerment and identity development. I examine the design decisions made for these two activities and their positive and negative impacts on the students’ making. Understanding how tools like mindmaps can be used to situate making as relevant to each student’s lived experience can allow us to understand what can make a makerspace more equitable.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Curriculum and Instruction

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Bawankule, Ashita

Contributors dc:contributor

• Tissenbaum, Michael
• Krist, Christina
• Goldstein, Molly
• Hebert, Lara

• Maker Identity
• Makerspaces
• Equity In Stem

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Ashita Bawankule

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/120149

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F120149