Many students are not happy when sitting in a classroom just listening to teachers. Students are eager to experience what they learn. They want to touch, feel, and experiment. When we as educators want to motivate students for insightful capacity building, we should think about having fun generating knowledge. In our classes, students are allowed to take full advantage of this Makerspace. Specified milestones structuring their work guide the students throughout the term. When working on their project, they have the freedom to design, produce, and experiment according to their interest and own ideas. It helps them reflecting on their learning process, and makes them proud of their achievements.
Richard Heininger works at the Institute of Business Informatics – Communications Engineering at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz (JKU) and conducts research in the wide area of Industry 4.0. He holds a master’s degree in Business Informatics from JKU and is currently starting a PhD thesis. During his career, Richard has already worked for a bank, a software vendor and an automotive supplier. He was involved in many customer and research projects in which he was responsible among others for process elicitation, training and prototype development. Teaching and researching at the JKU enables him to pass on his experience and to be close to the fourth industrial revolution.
Claudia Kaar is a PhD Student and Research Assistant at the Institute of Business Informatics – Communications Engineering. After her Bachelors’ and Masters’ Degree, she decided to stay at the university and deepen her knowledge in the field of learning and smart production systems. Her research interest lay in the understanding of students learning in the context of Makerspaces and production systems. Her goal is to facilitate students in their task-execution while using tangible artifacts.