I recently visited various higher education institutions with my daughter, a rising high school senior, as she considered applications to college. We sat through countless campus tours promoting the quality of the food, the dorms, the recreation centers and the sports teams. But in two instances, we heard them highlight a different student facility: their campus “makerspace.”
Makerspaces are physical locations with equipment that students can use to undertake do-it-yourself (DIY) projects. Arguably, they have been around for decades; we just haven’t used the name makerspace. At my institution, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, we’ve had a student-run DIY craft shop on our campus for more than 20 years.
The difference between older forms of makerspaces like that craft shop and emerging ones is that the latter focus more heavily on digital making, such as 3-D design and…
