This brief essay offers an introduction to a special symposium on equity in STEM-rich making. The introduction provides context that frames current equity issues in the Maker Movement, as well as short descriptions of the four articles included in the symposium. Collectively the papers in this symposium examine how complex power dynamics shape…

This paper discusses an initiative called Product Innovation and Development (PID) that was launched at Texas A&M University. The goal of PID is to create a high impact learning environment that focuses on innovative product development. Undergraduate students are hired to develop innovative new products. The student teams generate ideas for…

Speaking out against decades of injustice and challenging deficit perceptions of young learners and their families, "It's Not About Grit" pulls back the veil, revealing the social systems that marginalize and stigmatize mostly poor, urban students of color and their communities. At the same time, author Steven Goodman, founding executive…

Integrating Information Technology Communications in the classroom has been an important part of pre-service teacher education for over a decade. The advent of virtual worlds provides the pre-service teacher with an opportunity to study teaching and learning in a highly immersive 3D computer-based environment. Virtual worlds also provide a place…

Higher learning organizations frequently offer courses isolated from other disciplines or areas of concentration. The intent of this study was to explore collaboration practices on authentic based projects involving two distinct courses from differing programs: Instructional Technology and Educational Leadership. This paper describes the…

The availability of user-friendly tools for designing learning environments resulted in an innovative shift of design focus. This shift has been noticed from a user-centred, although passive and reactive, design approach to a participatory, at responsibility and self-directedness directed, design approach. This latter innovative and promising…

Current educational theory and practice clearly show that project-based instruction has the potential to enhance learning. Preliminary findings on one type of project-based learning in which students take on the role of hypermedia designers support this claim. This study examined the effect of being hypermedia designers on fourth-graders'…

The introductory instructional technology course at Iowa State University is a survey course covering various technologies. In this case, the instructor chose to create a situated learning environment using low-technology everyday surroundings to teach the fundamentals of photographic and video production, linking the photography, audio, and video…