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The conference contribution introduces digital “making” as a bottom-up movement, placing digital fabrication technologies on people’s desks to produce “almost anything”. It explores further the pedagogical value of making in education in general and in early entrepreneurial education in particular. Making as a pedagogical approach is analysed referencing established pedagogical concepts as well as a qualitative study based on interviews with makers and managers of maker spaces. Although maker education has so far only rarely been introduced in formal education, there are many initiatives that bring making and formal education together. According to maker experts formal education would benefit from making because it is well suited to promote creativity, practical skills as well as critical reflection. The Horizon2020 project DOIT designed a maker education programme aimed to develop pupils’ social innovation and entrepreneurial mind-sets, knowhow and skills. The programme will be evaluated based on the results of pilots in 10 European countries., Authors' manuscript of the paper published in the proceedings of the MIS4TEL Conference 2018: Di Mascio T., Vittorini P., Gennari R., et al. (eds.) (2019). Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning, 8th International Conference, MIS4TEL 2018, Toledo, Spain, 20-22 June 2018 (pp. 239-146). Springer, AISC 804.

The European project DOIT follows the maker pedagogy approach to develop an early entrepreneurial education program for children between the age of six and sixteen. In this program, children work collaboratively on solutions for challenges that they know from their personal environments with the aim to aspire to the entrepreneurial spirit and social innovation at the same time. The DOIT program will involve 1,000 children in two pilot phases at 11 pilot sites in ten different European countries. An evaluation design has been set up that comprises not only conventional evaluation tools such as questionnaires and tests but also participative instruments. Being aware that conventional evaluation tools are somewhat in contrast with the innovative setting of a maker project where children are the agents for change, we tried to incorporate participative evaluation instruments where possible. The latter ones have an empowering function as children are not only the 'object' of research but they themselves take over the role of co-researchers. The instruments are children interviewing children – focused on “how” they developed ideas and prototypes; an assessment of self-defined learning goals – focused on “what” they wanted and actually achieved to learn; and Shooting a video commercial – focused on “why” they developed a prototype and for whom. The paper describes these instruments and shares first-hand experiences and preliminary results.

The EU project DOIT has developed and tested an early entrepreneurial education programme in makerspace settings for children between the age of six and sixteen, involving 989 children in a series of two pilot phases in 10 European countries. The article describes the theoretical background of the educational programme, the evaluation approach and empirical results regarding creativity and self-efficacy., Paper accepted for the 2020 European Conference on Educational Research (ECER): Educational Research (Re)connecting Communities, Glasgow, UK.

This paper presents results of the scientific evaluation of a new way of coaching young learners (6-16 years old) in social innovation projects in makerspaces. The approach aims to foster an entrepreneurial mind-set, creativity and maker skills needed to design and visualise a prototype in the course of a social innovation project. Moreover, the young learners acquire digital literacy skills needed to share innovative ideas solving societal issues. The approach was trialled in ten European countries with 1.002 children. Firstly, we describe the theoretical background and didactical facets of the DOIT learning programme. Secondly, we illustrate practical examples of the pilots run in makerspaces in and out-side schools, e.g. fablabs, public libraries or mobile makerspaces set up in schools. Thirdly, we present the scientific findings of skill acquisition, especially the parameters of self-efficacy and creativity. The final section discusses the results, adaptations and further outlook of the new programme.

One of the main challenges in designing learning activities at the intersection of digital fabrication and solving complex problems is creating a motivating context to keep up children's engagement with the problem and going through the iterations of design thinking. Based on a four day out-of-school learning workshop with 18 children, we reflected upon ways to boost children's agency. The main question of our research relates to the interdependencies of workshop design and children's ability to steer the co-design of activities and outcomes. We present first evidence gained during the workshop series and suggest a framework for scenario-based, digital fabrication workshops.

The conference contribution introduces digital “making” as a bottom-up movement, placing digital fabrication technologies on people’s desks to produce “almost anything”. It explores further the pedagogical value of making in education in general and in early entrepreneurial education in particular. Making as a pedagogical approach is analysed referencing established pedagogical concepts as well as a qualitative study based on interviews with makers and managers of maker spaces. Although maker education has so far only rarely been introduced in formal education, there are many initiatives that bring making and formal education together. According to maker experts formal education would benefit from making because it is well suited to promote creativity, practical skills as well as critical reflection. The Horizon2020 project DOIT designed a maker education programme aimed to develop pupils’ social innovation and entrepreneurial mind-sets, knowhow and skills. The programme will be evaluated based on the results of pilots in 10 European countries.

The European project DOIT follows the maker pedagogy approach to develop an early entrepreneurial education program for children between the age of six and sixteen. In this program, children work collaboratively on solutions for challenges that they know from their personal environments with the aim to aspire to the entrepreneurial spirit and social innovation at the same time. The DOIT program will involve 1,000 children in two pilot phases at 11 pilot sites in ten different European countries. An evaluation design has been set up that comprises not only conventional evaluation tools such as questionnaires and tests but also participative instruments. Being aware that conventional evaluation tools are somewhat in contrast with the innovative setting of a maker project where children are the agents for change, we tried to incorporate participative evaluation instruments where possible. The latter ones have an empowering function as children are not only the 'object' of research but they themselves take over the role of co-researchers. The instruments are children interviewing children – focused on “how” they developed ideas and prototypes; an assessment of self-defined learning goals – focused on “what” they wanted and actually achieved to learn; and Shooting a video commercial – focused on “why” they developed a prototype and for whom. The paper describes these instruments and shares first-hand experiences and preliminary results., Preprint version of the article published in the proceedings of C+T 2019: Cech F. and Tellioğlu H. (eds.) (2019), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Communities and Technologies - Transforming Communities, Vienna, June 2019 (pp. 194-197). New York: ACM Press.

One of the main challenges in designing learning activities at the intersection of digital fabrication and solving complex problems is creating a motivating context to keep up children's engagement with the problem and going through the iterations of design thinking. Based on a four day out-of-school learning workshop with 18 children, we reflected upon ways to boost children's agency. The main question of our research relates to the interdependencies of workshop design and children's ability to steer the co-design of activities and outcomes. We present first evidence gained during the workshop series and suggest a framework for scenario-based, digital fabrication workshops., Preprint version of the article published in FL2019: Proceedings of FabLearn 2019, New York, March 2019 (pp. 144–147). New York: ACM Press.

The EU project DOIT has developed and tested an early entrepreneurial education programme in makerspace settings for children between the age of six and sixteen, involving 989 children in a series of two pilot phases in 10 European countries. The article describes the theoretical background of the educational programme, the evaluation approach and empirical results regarding creativity and self-efficacy.

This paper presents results of the scientific evaluation of a new way of coaching young learners (6-16 years old) in social innovation projects in makerspaces. The approach aims to foster an entrepreneurial mind-set, creativity and maker skills needed to design and visualise a prototype in the course of a social innovation project. Moreover, the young learners acquire digital literacy skills needed to share innovative ideas solving societal issues. The approach was trialled in ten European countries with 1.002 children. Firstly, we describe the theoretical background and didactical facets of the DOIT learning programme. Secondly, we illustrate practical examples of the pilots run in makerspaces in and out-side schools, e.g. fablabs, public libraries or mobile makerspaces set up in schools. Thirdly, we present the scientific findings of skill acquisition, especially the parameters of self-efficacy and creativity. The final section discusses the results, adaptations and further outlook of the new programme., Paper presented at the 2020 ISPIM Innovation Conference – Innovating in Times of Crisis, held online, 7-10 June 2020. Planned Event Proceedings: LUT Scientific and Expertise Publications (ISBN 978-952-335-466-111).

This paper presents a pilot evaluation study, focusing on a variety of mechanisms to successfully integrate the learning of physical computing, entrepreneurship and game development. First, we introduce a workshop design framework developed as part of the European project DOIT (Entrepreneurial skills for young social innovators in an open digital world). We then reflect on the implementation of the workshops over the course of two months, including a group of 24 youths between 15 and 16 years old. The workshops are evaluated by measuring students’ changing self-efficacy in a pre-post design. The interpretation of these changes is further complemented by interviewing the workshop facilitators. While we can find a small increase in students’ self-efficacy, our findings also show the importance of facilitating students’ ability to thrive in a project-based workshop setting, where part of their learning experience hinges on their ability to establish their own learning goals and making design decisions in the face of uncertain outcomes.

This paper presents a pilot evaluation study, focusing on a variety of mechanisms to successfully integrate the learning of physical computing, entrepreneurship and game development. First, we introduce a workshop design framework developed as part of the European project DOIT (Entrepreneurial skills for young social innovators in an open digital world). We then reflect on the implementation of the workshops over the course of two months, including a group of 24 youths between 15 and 16 years old. The workshops are evaluated by measuring students’ changing self-efficacy in a pre-post design. The interpretation of these changes is further complemented by interviewing the workshop facilitators. While we can find a small increase in students’ self-efficacy, our findings also show the importance of facilitating students’ ability to thrive in a project-based workshop setting, where part of their learning experience hinges on their ability to establish their own learning goals and making design decisions in the face of uncertain outcomes., Paper published in the Proceedings of the Impact Papers at EC-TEL 2020 - 15th European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning (virtual), 14-18 September 2020. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 2676, Paper 7.