About Family Makers
Family Makers empowers rural children and caregivers to become problem solvers by immersing them in doing and seeing culturally-relevant engineering. Family Makers is designed to leverage families' everyday making practices, turning them into valuable learning resources for engineering. Our programming further grounds engineering in the lived experiences of engineers who grew up in rural communities to help families see the relevance of engineering. Family Makers takes Research-Practice Partnership approach to co-design the curriculum with rural library staff and embeds learning supports for rural library staff to facilitate the Family Makers online programming. Together, we aim to lift barriers that a high population of rural children experiences in engaging with engineering learning and to position rural libraries as key institutions to democratize engineering learning opportunities.
How Will it Work?
Seven Rural Libraries
Partners
Family Makers collaborates with seven rural libraries, fostering collaborative input and co-design of the Family Makers curriculum
Creative Commons
License
Family Makers curriculum, tested through multiple cycles, will be available for free, shared under a Creative Commons license
Training Material &
Case Studies
Upon completion, the website will provide the curriculum, digital resources, training materials, and case studies for rural library staff
What Does it Look Like
for Children and Caregivers?
Engaging in six short online engineering sessions, children and caregivers will experience six different engineering disciplines that are relevant to rural communities and feel empowered that they have the resources and assets to do engineering.
Each session has an at-home component to deepen what they explored during the online program and continue engaging in engineering practices at home.
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The Timeline
Understand rural library staff and families’ challenges for online engineering learning through interviews and identify effective approaches for engaging them
Understand
Tested and revise Iteration One of Family Makers by implementing it across rural libraries
Test & Revise
Develop
Co-design six online sessions focusing on six different engineering disciplines and pilot test the curriculum
Replicate & Disseminate
Develop the final Family Makers curriculum by testing and revising Iteration Two of Family Makers and disseminate it nationally