The second output (IO2) of ASSESSMAKE21 was the development of the digital tools to support the practice, development and assessment of 21st Century Skills as part of making activities. The design of these tools was the subject of output 1 (IO1). You can read more about the design process and outcomes from IO1 here.
These tools are designed to equip teachers/educators in makerspaces with a more efficient way to embed the practice and development of 21st Century Skills as part of their making activities and to monitor the development of these skills by learners. This in turn is expected to impact the quality of the learning provided in makerspaces, since it will allow both teachers and learners to reflect on the learning process and understand better learners’ needs and skills developed and finally revise/improve their learning activities accordingly.
The Educator Dashboard allows anybody involved in running a maker space to set up and manage their students/participants. The Student App is the tool that students will use as part of their making activities to track how and when they use 21st Century Skills as part of their projects as well as capturing real world examples. Both the Educator Dashboard and the Student App are web based tools that can be accessed from most devices.
This short video provides an overview of the Educator Dashboard and Student App experiences. If you want to learn more about how use these tools please check out our Educator Handbook.
Though the tools were developed specifically to meet the needs of the makerspace context, there is potential for their use in other non-formal and experiential educational contexts. As a digital tool, there is potential to easily gather usage data for later analysis and to input to potential future expansion or scaling of the tool.
If you’re interested in using these tools to both promote the practice and gain insights into the development of 21st Century Skills as part of making activities that you run in either formal or non-formal contexts, please get in touch using the form linked below.
