Participative evaluation with children in educational maker projects: Experiences from a pilot action

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.