Elon University’s first makerspace is now open in Harper Hall, featuring 3D printing and scanning and much more.
The Maker Hub is a new learning space, sponsored by Instructional and Campus Technologies, promoting “making” on Elon’s campus. Located in Colonnades’ Harper Hall, the Hub has tools for 3D printing and scanning, electronics tinkering, e-textiles creation, mobile app development, and more. A place to learn, collaborate, and invent, students, faculty, and staff are invited to work together to create projects that integrate technology, science, mechanical, and artistic elements.
Open to anyone with a Phoenix card, the space will be student-staffed during open hours to provide training and mentorship to Hub users. An initiative led by Michael Vaughn and Dan Reis, the Maker Hub is meant to be a space to access tools, supplies, materials and knowledge that can’t always accessed individually.
Vaughn and Reis, instructional technologists in Elon’s Teaching and Learning Technologies, hope for the Hub to become a gathering place for faculty, staff, and students to share ideas and expertise. “The best part so far has been hearing the ideas, from faculty and students,” Reis said. “Ideas for ways faculty can use the Hub in their classes to students who want to take things apart just to see how they work and everything in between.”
Projects already created in the space include a 3D printed acorn holder, knitted scarves, a quadruped robot, a Lego Phoenix, and much more. Many students, and faculty and staff members, have already entered the space knowing nothing about making. “For me, I love seeing how excited the students, faculty and staff are about the space. It’s a place that inspires ideas and potential,” Vaughn said. “The Maker Hub student staff are starting to get what making is and what it means, and I love watching them share their knowledge and passion with others.”
The Maker Hub hopes to inspire the maker mindset, which includes taking ownership of your learning, developing your intrinsic motivation, and embracing failure as an essential component of your learning process. The maker mentality seems to pair well with Elon’s own hard-working model.
“I think a significant number of students are entering Elon with a distorted sense of what learning is, and how it works for them personally,” Vaughn said. “Failure and confusion are the byproducts of authentic learning, and they’re also two things students fear. We want the Maker Hub to be a space where students challenge these preexisting notions about their learning, and develop the perseverance to complete projects that matter to them.”
“If you are in the Maker Hub and think it needs a specific piece of equipment or supplies, let us know,” Reis said. “We want people to realize: this is your space.”
The Maker Hub is open Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. – 11 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. – 6 p,m. For more information, contact makers@elon.edu, and learn more at elon.edu/makers.