We have explored designers having empathy for the audience of focus, designers using empathy as a means to an end, and designers using empathy to deliver a meaningful design deliverable. Our research has evolved from studying how designers reflect on their own design context and the audience's given circumstance to designers acting on moments of…

This study investigates the impact of gamified project-based learning (GPBL) on the learning motivation of elementary students in rural China and investigates how they perceive GPBL. Using GPBL as an intervention, this study adopts a descriptive qualitative research design, where observation notes, interviews, and focus groups triangulate to…

During young adolescence, many youth develop strong identities in relation to science, technology, engineering and mathematics with computing (STEM + C). One way to design for student engagement in STEM + C is to create project-based units that leverage students' interests. We created one such unit, called the "smart greenhouse project".…

Digital technologies and the instructional contexts in which they are embedded can increase students' access to meaningful learning opportunities. Although there is a tradition of designing and integrating digital tools in secondary-grades project-based science instruction to enhance learners' access to disciplinary learning, the elementary grades…

In higher education, online students are often precluded from research assistantships that are more accessible for campus-based students. At a highly ranked institution for online learning, we developed the Undergraduate Research Program (URP) to address this gap in opportunities for online students. The URP is designed to engage fully distanced…

The shift from traditional education to maker-centered learning calls for an analysis and evaluation of the current studies on professional development in maker-centered learning. The current systematic literature review was conducted to examine existing literature on teacher professional development for maker-centered learning. It aligns the…

This article presents a collaborative maker project integrating the arts in a synchronous online environment. Based on the Thinkering, Making, Sharing, and Reflecting (TMSR) model, the four components of hands-on, minds-on, hearts-on, and social-on learning were integrated into an online collaborative maker project involving arts, music, and…