Building Maker Education Ecosystems in Innovation Spaces

Declaration

This article is an exclusive manuscript by Professor Fu Zhiyong from Tsinghua University’s Maker Education Laboratory, published in the journal “Modern Educational Technology”. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. For usage, please click to read the original text and contact the “Educational Technology Consulting” backend. After authorization, please clearly state at the beginning of the article:The article is reproduced from the WeChat public account “Educational Technology News”, WeChat ID: etnewsletter.

Fu Zhiyong

(Tsinghua University, Academy of Arts and Design, Beijing 100871)

[Abstract]

This article explores the concepts and models of the innovation space ecosystem in conjunction with the characteristics of maker practice and maker education, providing support for creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial education. Against the backdrop of entrepreneurship education, maker practice has become an important force for educational reform in higher education. Practice-based education in the maker model offers new ideas for cultivating innovative talents in universities from various aspects such as participation models, learning content, teacher-student interaction, and learning environments. The innovation space, as a platform for maker practice, includes core elements such as cooperative communities, creative practices, open resources, and collaborative spaces. Cooperative communities are the foundation of participatory innovation, while creative practices encompass courses, workshops, and various exchanges and competitions. Open resources include open-source equipment, tools, and methods, and collaborative spaces support participatory innovation with flexible and variable environments. These core elements support each other, forming an organic ecosystem.

The term “maker” originates from the English words Maker or Hacker, referring to individuals who enjoy hands-on practice and sharing, striving to turn various ideas into reality. Chris Anderson, former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, described makers in “Makers: The New Industrial Revolution” as, “First, they use digital tools to design on screens and increasingly use desktop manufacturing machines to create products; second, they are part of the internet generation, instinctively sharing their results online and bringing internet culture and collaboration into the manufacturing process, collectively creating the DIY future on an unprecedented scale.” Mark Hatch, the CEO of TechShop, believes that the core of the maker movement is better access to tools, knowledge, and the construction of an open distribution system that involves everyone.

[I. Development of Maker Spaces]

The early development of makers was characterized by technological democratization and countercultural elements. As the U.S. reshapes its manufacturing sector and China transitions from manufacturing to creation, makers have quickly become a central force for innovation. Understanding makers requires integrating the concepts of maker spaces and maker culture.

Silvia Lindtner from the University of Michigan has summarized four forms of maker spaces: early membership-based communities, networked open organizations, international maker movements, and product incubation platforms. The L0pht maker space in Boston, which began operations in 1992, was only open to a few members; the C-base in Berlin, established in the fall of 1995, was more public-oriented, aiming to increase knowledge and skills in computer software, hardware, and data networks while promoting internet freedom with a strong sense of mission. This organization engages in numerous related activities, such as introducing themes like robotics and computer-aided design on Children’s Day. Noisebridge, a highly regarded maker space in the San Francisco Bay Area, has guided the global maker space movement. Inspired by the European maker spaces Metalab in Vienna and C-base in Berlin, Noisebridge started in 2007 as a space for sharing, creating, collaborating, researching, developing, mentoring, and learning. Noisebridge has also extended to grassroots communities worldwide. Currently, many maker spaces exist in the form of startup incubators, such as Chaihuo Maker Space in Shenzhen, which plays an important role in research and development.

Dale Dougherty, editor of Make magazine, defines a maker space as “a place where creative people from different professions and communities gather to share with each other, meet like-minded friends, and turn ideas into reality.” Kera D. believes that a maker space can be defined by a series of shared technologies related to open-source hardware and software, governance processes, and values. Mitch Altman, the founder of Noisebridge, believes that people in maker spaces can explore what they love through hacking, receiving support from community members. Hacking refers to maximizing one’s capabilities and being willing to share. Open hackerspaces, makerspaces, and TechShops provide venues for makers to gather offline, where they learn, compete in teams, and showcase themselves through workshops, hackathons, and Maker Faires. Maker spaces represent the democratization of design, engineering, manufacturing, and education. They are community centers equipped with tools, integrating manufacturing equipment, community, and education, providing resources for community members to design, prototype, and create works. These spaces can take the form of loosely organized individual sharing spaces and tools, with operators being for-profit businesses, non-profits, or affiliated with or hosted by schools, universities, and libraries.

1. U.S. Driving Policies

Maker activities promote the development of design, manufacturing, and technology engineering, fostering entrepreneurial spirit. The Obama administration introduced maker spaces to 1,000 U.S. schools in early 2012 to cultivate a new generation of system designers and production innovators. On June 18, 2014, the White House held the first Maker Faire, launching a nationwide participation plan to provide more students and entrepreneurs access to the tools, spaces, and mentors needed for making. These policies include: enabling businesses to support school maker spaces and extracurricular programs, allowing employees to take leave to serve as mentors, and companies becoming “major clients” of maker spaces, like Ford’s partnership with TechShop, or acting as multi-channel retailers to help consumers become innovative makers or startups. Universities can add a “maker portfolio” option during admissions (like MIT) and build more maker spaces for students and clubs on campus, while supporting better hardware and software tools at national, regional, and local levels, such as the equipment in MIT Fab Labs. Government agencies and community organizations can implement projects similar to production design clusters, allowing entrepreneurs to create more job opportunities. Establishing more maker spaces in schools, libraries, museums, and community organizations allows the public to have more access to maker mentors and activities. Foundations and philanthropists should also provide funding for communities interested in adopting maker practices.

2. Characteristics of Maker Education

Maker education emphasizes action, sharing, and collaboration, and focuses on integrating new technological means, gradually evolving into a new approach for interdisciplinary innovation cultivation. Some renowned foreign universities have begun to adopt maker practice as an important model for interdisciplinary innovation and experiential learning, such as the establishment of the student-operated maker space MITERS at MIT and Stanford University’s Transformative Learning Technologies Lab, which is creating open-source courses for maker spaces and rapid prototyping labs worldwide.

In maker practice, students are seen as creators rather than consumers, and schools are shifting from being centers of knowledge transmission to places centered on practical application and creation. Academic maker spaces and rapid prototyping labs are rapidly increasing, allowing students to undertake course projects and self-directed topics while conducting content- and product-centered teaching activities. These spaces are innovatively showcasing the value of education. Maker practice is creating an organizational culture that encourages students to participate and propose creative solutions to real-world problems. The “New Media Consortium Horizon Report (2014 Higher Education Edition)” predicts that this trend will have the strongest impact in the next three to five years.

[II. Makers and Entrepreneurship Education]

Education is a process that changes human behavior patterns. Here, behavior refers to a broad sense, including thinking, feeling, and obvious actions. Entrepreneurship education focuses on the changes in students’ thinking and cognition, emphasizing the drive of entrepreneurial spirit to stimulate action and thought, not limited to the traditional sense of entrepreneurship education outcomes, which is to incubate successful businesses or entrepreneurs.

1. From STEAM to Maker Education

The widely promoted STEM education has evolved and improved, incorporating the element of “Art” to become STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics) education. The intersection of STEAM education and maker education will more comprehensively promote the process of cultivating students’ innovative abilities. Although STEAM education is widely applied in Europe and America, the incorporation of maker concepts establishes a connection between students and real life, while also addressing deficiencies in engineering education. In the United States, over 60 universities have successively established maker spaces on their campuses. To promote the development of the maker movement in education, Stanford University has also set up an academic scholarship for maker education research to encourage educators to explore the applications of the maker movement in different educational fields.

It can be said that the ultimate goal of maker education is to cultivate students’ pioneering personalities. The theoretical basis of maker education is established on concepts such as experiential education, project-based learning, innovation education, DIY (Do It Yourself), and DIT (Do It Together). At the same time, maker education emphasizes the overall nature of educational experience, where the learning process itself replaces learning outcomes as the most important part. Education experts Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary S. Stager summarize eight elements required for good maker projects: goals and relevance, sufficient time, complexity, intensity, collaboration, accessible materials, shareability, and novelty. These elements become reference norms in the design and implementation of maker education curricula. The “UpScaling Creative Classrooms” framework developed by the European Institute for Technology Assessment consists of eight dimensions: content and curriculum, assessment, learning practices, teaching practices, organization, leadership and values, connectivity, and infrastructure. This framework views ubiquitous learning environments as components of a learning ecosystem, capable of responding to the context and culture over time. The eight dimensions of the model form a system that encourages information technology-based learning environments to expand innovative teaching practices in multidimensional ways.

2. From Makers to Entrepreneurship

Since the Milwaukee maker space invited the public to participate in activities, maker spaces have gradually aggregated into a powerful non-academic learning force. This has led many universities to discover learning opportunities within it, with the establishment of ThinkLab at Mary Washington University and FabLab at Stanford University. Self-directed learning is the primary mode of learning for makers in maker spaces. The interaction among makers fosters a dynamic and highly collaborative learning behavior, where the power of teams and peer support, suggestions, and assistance are well reflected. Students can control and lead problem-based learning. Ultimately, maker spaces will promote inter-school connections and facilitate collaborative projects.

In response to the demand for innovative development, universities are increasingly engaging in entrepreneurship education, linking practical education with social, industrial needs, and innovative values. As a form of innovation that involves everyone, makers have become a new force in universities, transitioning from creativity to innovation, and creating a broader foundation for entrepreneurship education. Tsinghua University considers “three innovations”: creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship as an integrated perspective, where maker education becomes an important connecting point for “three innovations” education. Maker practice is an important model that spontaneously transforms creativity into reality while also creating opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship.

3. From Entrepreneurship to Pioneering

Early entrepreneurship research was primarily situated within the realm of economics, mostly exploring the roles, functions, and contributions of entrepreneurs to competitive worlds. In recent years, due to the involvement of management scholars, the perspective has gradually shifted to organizational individuals, contemplating how to effectively make entrepreneurial decisions and actions. The concept of “Entrepreneuring” aims to verbalize entrepreneurship, emphasizing the process of “entrepreneurship”. From a process-oriented perspective, outcomes cannot serve as the sole criterion for judging entrepreneurial success, as entrepreneurship is a continuous, socially interactive behavior. Hjorth and Steyaert argue that entrepreneurship is essentially a form of “social creation” that occurs not only in the business domain but throughout society. Entrepreneurship is not merely the establishment of grand enterprises; rather, it is the process of creating differences from everyday minutiae, driving qualitative changes through quantitative shifts. Entrepreneurship is also seen as a form of “dialogical creativity,” occurring and taking shape in our daily experiences, stories, dramas, conversations, and performances. Gartner posits that actions shape entrepreneurs, thus research on entrepreneurship can also start from analyzing entrepreneurial behavior. Therefore, the participatory and process-focused nature of maker practice closely relates to entrepreneurship in terms of intrinsic motivation.

[III. Building Collaborative Innovation Ecosystems]

Innovation ecosystems are demand-driven, possessing self-organization, self-growth, self-adaptation, and self-repair capabilities. The components within them coexist, adapt, and progress together, with open boundaries. Dr. Ron Dvir defines “innovation ecology” as a science that studies the spatial, temporal, cultural, and relational elements that provide nutrients for innovation and create external atmospheres. Innovation ecology studies how to encourage, nurture, and catalyze innovative thoughts and ideas, transforming them into valuable working environments. It advocates and supports individuals, teams, and all institutions to conduct research for sustainable economic development.

MIT proposed the concept of the “Entrepreneurship Ecosystem”. Dunn points out that MIT’s entrepreneurship education and training are no longer manifested in a centralized manner but rather as a project-organized ecosystem that cultivates entrepreneurial spirit collectively on campus. This model is replacing traditional entrepreneurship models, tightly linking universities, businesses, governments, and students, allowing scientific research and entrepreneurial activities to progress in tandem, creating a virtuous cycle between university entrepreneurship education and socio-economic development. In March 2015, the State Council General Office issued the “Guiding Opinions on the Development of Innovation Spaces to Promote Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship,” which first proposed the concept of “crowd-creation”. The concept of crowd-creation is the core of “mass entrepreneurship” and “mass innovation”, reflecting the trend of user innovation, mass innovation, and open innovation in the “Innovation 2.0 era”. Innovation spaces are defined as low-cost, convenient, all-element, and open new entrepreneurial service platforms constructed through market mechanisms, specialized services, and capitalized pathways that grasp the characteristics and needs of innovation and entrepreneurship in the internet environment. A well-functioning crowd-creation ecosystem comprises four elements: cooperative communities, creative practices, open resources, and collaborative spaces.

1. Cooperative Communities

A community or neighborhood refers to a group of people with shared ideas, behavioral norms, and interactive relationships. A typical maker community is an interdisciplinary learning community and practice community. Building an open and collaborative network can facilitate cooperation with maker communities worldwide, sharing insights, ideas, and practices while maintaining relationships with local makers and receiving support from maker communities.

(1) Learning Community

Maker activities feature characteristics of learning communities, comprising learners and facilitators (including teachers, experts, and mentors) who interact and share various learning resources during the learning process to complete specific learning tasks, forming interpersonal relationships that mutually influence and promote each other.

The concept of practice communities proposed by Cai Dunhao and others views society as a large learning system attached to countless practice communities. Within the same institutional environment, learning becomes a collective behavior rather than an individual one. In this concept, community members need to undergo a process of “identity establishment”: first, integrating into the group; second, establishing common goals. This theory reflects the socialization of maker learning and the characteristics of hands-on participation.

(2) Interdisciplinary Teams

Most current innovations occur in interdisciplinary fields. Maker practice emphasizes the participation of “T-shaped” talents, where each participant in interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary teams possesses their own specialized skills. Through informal or formal learning practices, they form a common language across disciplines to solve complex innovative problems. Leveraging the professional advantages of interdisciplinary teams facilitates mutual learning and rapid realization of product prototypes during maker activities.

(3) Creative Community

The Creative Community, promoted by Tsinghua Academy of Arts and Design’s Service Design Research Institute and the COIN Cross-Border Innovation Platform, focuses on sharing, discussing, collaborating, and innovating ideas. It centers around users, gathering diverse social groups and ordinary users from design, engineering, industry, business, and academia, facilitating cross-disciplinary innovation through creative collisions, knowledge sharing, and design practices. The wisdom, inspiration, and innovative ideas of the creative community will integrate widely with information technology and social culture, presenting tangible and commercially viable creative design products and solutions. Weekend workshops and pilot projects have already been initiated, focusing on promoting the development of the creative industry and culture.

2. Creative Practices

Creative practices include informal learning, workshops, competitions, and exchanges, as well as formal courses and research. Maker practice activities feature self-organization and spontaneity, unfolding through participatory forms. In practice activities, it is necessary to consider course construction and keep students focused on project participation while also establishing appropriate learning environments to promote interdisciplinary interactions.

(1) Informal Learning Activities

Informal learning refers to spontaneous, self-organized, and more flexible learning activities outside formal curricula. For example, the “Urban Hackathon” in New York adopts a “Hack-a-thon” format, where designers and developers collaboratively engage in development using the government’s open data, promoting the integration of urban management and technology.

In the spring of 2013, Tsinghua Academy of Arts and Design launched a weekend workshop called Designow, aiming to gather interdisciplinary resources for innovation and entrepreneurship. The workshop brought together young creative talents from Tsinghua University and other universities and enterprises to create innovative prototypes over the weekend. During the activities, mentors from different fields such as business, design, and technology provided professional guidance to participants. The “Maker Hero Journey” model was employed in the Designow activities to support team innovation, guiding teams from task challenges to prototype completion through stages such as challenge solicitation, entering an unusual world, development and rewards, and returning with results and experiences. These stages are crucial points influencing the transformation of makers. Unlike Tsinghua’s “Xuetang Online,” which is a massive open online course (MOOC), makers prefer learning in the physical world and face-to-face interactions, where learning by doing is the primary mode. Online platforms can serve as knowledge repositories and supplements.

(2) Maker Hero Journey

First, the challenges faced by makers stem from the real world, such as environment, waste, energy, greening, and education. Social media is utilized to collect challenges and build social circles, where innovators from design, technology, and business collaborate in teams to embark on journeys. Group collaboration, project-based practices, mutual learning, open exploration, and flipped classrooms will all be applied in the activities, with the spirit of assistance among makers helping them find directions for innovation. Every participant can become a reproducer and disseminator of knowledge, and education becomes a self-organizing process. When makers enter unusual innovation contexts, they encounter guidance from mentors. Mentors not only provide resources and experiences but also lead directions, teaching design thinking methods and initiating rapid prototyping through design tools.

In the maker journey, experiential learning is a key feature of iterative development. Makers embody the “hacker” spirit, such as hacking 3D printers for remote control, thereby igniting curiosity and breaking down fears of technology. Thus, making is not only a grassroots movement but also an open innovation model, as exemplified by Tsinghua Academy of Arts and Design graduate students’ citizen science project themed “Bird Watching,” which uses crowdsourcing and collective intelligence to address complex ecological system issues, reflecting makers’ contemplation on the relationship between humanity and technology.

(3) Formal Curriculum Teaching

Tsinghua Academy of Arts and Design’s elective course “Design and Technology Entrepreneurship Laboratory” applies maker models to formal learning systems as an innovative entrepreneurship course. Technology-driven entrepreneurial models have matured, yet there is a pressing need to explore design-driven innovation. The course covers design thinking, maker practice skills, agile user experience, and the concepts, methods, and cases of human-centered technology. Students use open innovation tools to think broadly and discover innovations, developing viable prototypes through a human-centered approach. Its core philosophy integrates design thinking, experiential learning, and critical manufacturing. The course is based on maker spaces and entrepreneurship laboratories, collaborating with domestic and international experts and incubators to rapidly develop prototypes over two weekends and further explore commercialization and market potential.

(4) Open Innovation Activities

Addressing challenges through open innovation models is a hallmark of makers. Open innovation methods include creating platforms to seek solutions collaboratively, running creative competitions, establishing open ports to invite ideas, creating consumer labs, operating user-guided projects, publishing challenges to the global innovation community, and co-creating the future with consumers or partners. Makers are characterized by non-profit motivations and uniqueness, driven by intrinsic interests in their creations, where the uncertainty of outcome often becomes the early foundation for innovation. For example, Foldit allows players to build three-dimensional structures of various proteins, conducting crowdsourced scientific experiments in a playful manner. Meanwhile, makers focus on life, treating social issues as challenges, such as hackathons centered around environmental concerns and open data, which aim to create social value through technology.

3. Open Resources

Based on open principles, providing support platforms such as software and hardware, project libraries, and design innovation tools, as well as establishing online communication spaces for makers, introducing new ideas and projects online, and providing continuous feedback and support are the foundations for the sustainability of crowd-creation activities.

(1) Open-source Hardware and Software

Open-source culture and ideas center around sharing knowledge, achieving faster innovation through public collaboration. The innovative activities in maker spaces rely on open-source software and hardware tools to lower barriers to creation, such as 3D printers, open-source hardware like Arduino and Raspberry Pi, and various rapid prototyping software, which conveniently and flexibly support the production of interactive prototypes. During the publishing phase of works, knowledge sharing (Creative Commons) serves as a form of creative authorization that can “increase the accessibility of creative works, serving as a basis for others to create and share,” providing intellectual property support for maker practices.

(2) Project Libraries and Media

Crowd-creation spaces need to provide learners with better ways to discover and access relevant content, collecting, storing, and sharing knowledge related to innovation. Makers can filter projects based on their interests, abilities, and available equipment. These projects should be easy to participate in, suitable for teamwork, and offer flexible skill-sharing modules. Maker-related media not only report on the content of maker practices but also participate in related activities and promote mentor resources, enabling novice makers to quickly get started and improve. Additionally, crowdfunding platforms provide makers with a participatory innovation model, continuously refining and co-creating new products through the release of innovative projects and interaction with supporters.

(3) Design Tools

In addition to hand tools and processing equipment, design tools that support hands-on creation and research and development are crucial for maker spaces. The main tools can be categorized into four types: collaboration tools, design tools, measurement tools, and analysis tools. Collaboration tools primarily assist people in collaborative communication and promote task progress through software or devices. Design tools are a category of tools used for product design, ranging from drawing tools to various software and rapid modeling tools. Measurement tools are used to collect and record data, with wearable devices being particularly useful for analyzing user mobility behavior. Analysis tools are used to analyze and interpret the collected data to facilitate the next steps in innovation.

4. Collaborative Spaces

As stated in “The Third Teacher”, “The environment is no longer a lifeless, completely materialized thing but has become an educational force with personality charm.” Shared, flexible spaces have become important venues for crowd-creation. Open spatial forms better support cross-border communication and change participants’ behaviors. Collaborative spaces include co-creation spaces, co-working spaces, living labs, and various other models.

(1) Co-Creation Spaces

Co-creation is a collaborative innovation model that includes processes of stimulating participation, optimizing, connecting creative ideas, sharing results, and continuous development. Co-creation requires integrating knowledge from design, technology, management, and other fields to create novel and innovative products during participation while also being a process of mutual learning and establishing new interpersonal relationships, generating organizational influence. From both virtual and physical perspectives, there are three different types of co-creation spaces: network-based social media co-creation spaces, physical environment-based co-creation spaces, and co-creation spaces that combine both virtual and physical environments. Co-creation spaces are supported by inspiring physical or virtual environments, providing opportunities for users, designers, and others to meet equally in informal settings.

Creating co-creation spaces, in application contexts, can create real use scenarios around daily life, lowering participation thresholds for the public. Spaces should bring value to all stakeholders, meeting individual goals, and activities should be lively and interesting. In activities, participants contribute content in various ways based on their interests, time constraints, and capabilities, encouraging innovation and informal communication. “Co-creation spaces” can flexibly collect and analyze data within limited time and resource constraints, continuously applying results and iteratively developing.

(2) Co-Working Spaces

Co-working spaces serve co-workers who share common values, typically coming from different companies, organizations, or being entrepreneurs themselves. San Francisco is the city with the most co-working spaces. According to a survey by “Deskwanted.com”, as of July 2014, there were already 3,000 co-working spaces globally, with over three-quarters located in Europe, the U.S., and Australia. Co-working spaces provide new working models, and the organization advocating for co-working spaces, Coworking Toronto, emphasizes that the most important aspect is not renting desks or spaces, but helping people connect with others. Early entrepreneurial projects do not require large offices, as many tasks can be handled directly through the internet. Entrepreneurship requires inspiration from cross-border thinking, finding partners and funding, and receiving professional advice from various fields, which are all advantages of co-working spaces.

(3) Living Labs

Living labs in the EU are environments for practical life testing and experimentation, serving as both an innovative methodology where users and producers can co-innovate and an innovation incubation platform that promotes user-driven open innovation through public-private partnership models.

Living labs engage in co-creation, exploration, experimentation, and evaluation, collaboratively designing and exploring emerging trends, behaviors, and market opportunities with users and producers, and assessing concepts, products, and services. Living labs adopt a participatory innovation model in their innovation stages, conducting research or pilot services in real scenarios, collecting user data through daily interviews and evaluations, group discussions, or online collection methods. Participants form focus groups, working through user interaction formats such as online face-to-face meetings, group gatherings, and phone interviews, while service providers or designers assume roles as leaders, motivators, and observers. The advantage of living labs lies in their ability to collect real user feedback over the long term, while the challenge is how to motivate and attract long-term user participation. The development of wearable technology offers new possibilities for user behavior research, and urban and community-scale spaces have become new fields for the research and development of innovative services and products.

[IV. Conclusion]

Through innovation spaces and the maker ecosystems they nurture, not only do students and participants learn practical knowledge, but more importantly, they cultivate innovative qualities and abilities. Through interdisciplinary learning and project practice, campus makers have become an important bridge connecting academia with society and industry, actively promoting social and industrial innovation while driving educational reform through innovative entrepreneurship.

Maker education brings new community operational rules, leading the wave of mass innovation through self-organization and cross-border collaboration. Makers come out of interest, find joy in participation, and develop shared aspirations through interaction. The sustainable development of maker projects from ideas to prototypes challenges collective intelligence and innovative execution capabilities. Maker practice encourages people to dare to attempt to change themselves, with open-source tools and easily accessible technology allowing makers to rethink the significance of manufacturing from social and cultural perspectives, considering the value of innovation and entrepreneurship. Business models such as crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, along with various angel and venture capital funds, provide the public with opportunities to mobilize social resources and establish startup teams. As a supportive environment for maker practices, innovation spaces are not just physical locations; they should also be ecosystems centered around creative communities, gathering open resources and collective intelligence. Currently, under the impetus of national innovation and entrepreneurship policies, enterprises and industries are undergoing profound transformations, continuously calling for educational responses. Building innovation spaces and ecosystems that support maker education not only provides opportunities for makers and maker communities to change the world but also fundamentally influences the future of education in China.

[References]

[1] Chris Anderson. Makers: The New Industrial Revolution [M]. Beijing: CITIC Press, 2012.

[2] Mark Hatch, The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World of Crafters, Hackers, and Tinkerers, September 25, 2013.

[3] Silvia Lindtner, Garnet Hertz, Paul Dourish, Emerging Sites of HCI Innovation: Hackerspaces, Hardware Startups & Incubators, In CHI’14: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2014.

[4] Xu Siyuan, Li Zhengfeng. The Social Network of Public Participation in Innovation: The Maker Movement and Maker Spaces [J]. Science Research, 2014, (12).

[5] Kera D. NanoSmano Lab in Ljubljana: Disruptive Prototypes and Experimental Governance of Nanotechnologies in the Hackerspaces [J]. Journal of Science Communication, 2012, 11(04): 37-49.

[6] Mitch Altman, What’s a Hackerspace? Mitch Altman Explains (video), Make, http://makezine.com/2011/09/07/whats-a-hackerspace-mitch-altman-explains-video/, 2011.

[7] Li Hongpei, Yan Xiaoyan. Practical Cases and Inspirations of Makerspaces in American Libraries, Library Science Research, 2013.

[8] Announcing the First White House Maker Faire, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/02/03/announcing-first-white-house-maker-faire, 2014.

[9] L. Johnson, S. Adams Becker, V. Estrada, A. Freeman (Authors); Zhang Tiedao, Yin Bingshan, Jiang Mingrong, Wu Shasha, Li Yu (Translators), The New Media Consortium Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition, Austin, Texas: New Media Consortium, 2013.

[10] Jones, C., “Entrepreneurship Education: Revisiting Our Role and Its Purpose”, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol.17(4), 500-513. 2010.

[11] Stager, G., & Martinez, S. The Maker Movement: A Learning Revolution. http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-leading/issues/Member_Profile_Jason_Schrage_Making_School_a_Little_Less_Painful_through_Technology, 2014.

[12] Liu Yuzhong, Towards Pluralism in Entrepreneurship Research: Emerging Perspectives and Methods in Entrepreneurship Research, Entrepreneurship Management Research, 6(4), 1-12 (NSC 98-2410-H-153-009-MY2).

[13] Hjorth, D., and Steyaert, C., “Introduction” in Hjorth, D. and Steyaert, C. (eds.), Narrative and Discursive Approaches to Entrepreneurship, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, 1-8. 2004.

[14] Gartner W B. Who is an Entrepreneur? Is the Wrong Question [J]. American Journal of Small Business, 1988, (4), 11-32.

[15] Katharine Dunn. The Entrepreneurship Ecosystem [OL]. .

[16] State Council General Office Document No. 9 (2015) “Guiding Opinions on the Development of Innovation Spaces to Promote Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, 2015-03-02.

[17] Crowdsourcing, Crowdfunding, and Crowd-Creation: New Models of Innovation and Entrepreneurship – Speech by Professor Liu Zhiying from the School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China [OL]. .

[18] Cai Dunhao. Teaching Model of Entrepreneurship Education: Paradigms Differ from Current Reflections [J]. Entrepreneurship Management Research, 2013, (2): 1-18.

[19] Gentry, J. W. Guide to Business Gaming and Experiential Learning [M]. East Brunswick NJ: Nichols/GP Publishing, 1990.

[20] Fu Zhiyong, Guo Qinghua. Research on Campus Makers Based on the Hero Journey Model, Proceedings of the 30th Academic Conference of the Industrial Design Department, Tsinghua University Academy of Arts and Design, China Architecture Industry Press, October 2014, pp. 4-9.

[21] Zhang Na, Maker Marathon: Possible Models for Innovation in Science Center Exhibits, 2014.

[22] Foldit [OL]. .

[23] Creative Commons [OL]. .

[24] Li Qing, Ji Yang, et al. Living Lab Innovation Theory and Practice [M]. Beijing: People’s Posts and Telecommunications Publishing House, 2013.

[25] O’Donnell Wicklund Pigozzi and Peterson, Bruce Mau, David W. Orr, The Third Teacher: 79 Ways You Can Use Design to Transform Teaching & Learning, Abrams; 1st edition (April 1, 2010).

[26] Eija Kaasinen, Kaisa Koskela-Huotari, Veikko Ikonen, Marketta Niemelä and Pirjo Näkki, Three Approaches to Co-Creating Services with Users, Conference: Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2011 – 13th IFIP TC 13 International Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, September 5-9, 2011, Proceedings, Part IV.

[27] Coworking – More Than Just a Trend With Benefits That You Can Measure [OL]. .

[28] Coworking Toronto [OL]. .

[29] Living Lab [OL]. .

[30] What is a Living Lab? [OL]. .

The Maker Education Laboratory is a lab under the Service Design Research Institute of Tsinghua University, focusing on how to implement STEAM teaching goals and inquiry-based educational concepts through the maker model. The research directions of the laboratory include K12 user research, STEAM theoretical research, inquiry-based teaching theory research, maker teaching curriculum development, and maker space design theory.

Laboratory website:http://makereducationlab.com