Knowledge creation through maker practices and the role of teacher and peer support in collaborative invention projects

This study analyzed collaborative invention projects by teams of lower-secondary (13–14-year-old) Finnish students. In invention projects, student teams design and make materially embodied collaborative inventions using traditional and digital fabrication technologies. This investigation focused on the student teams’ knowledge creation processes by examining how they applied maker practices (i.e., design process, computer engineering, product design, and science practices) in their co-invention projects and the effects of teacher and peer support. In our investigations, we relied on video data and on-site observations, utilizing and further developing visual data analysis methods. Our findings assist in expanding the scope of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) research toward sociomaterially mediated knowledge creation, revealing the open-ended, nonlinear, and self-organized flow of the co-invention projects that take place around digital devices. Our findings demonstrate the practice-based, knowledge-creating nature of these processes, where computer engineering, product design, and science are deeply entangled with design practices. Furthermore, embodied design practices of sketching, practical experimenting, and working with concrete materials were found to be of the essence to inspire and deepen knowledge creation and advancement of epistemic objects. Our findings also reveal how teachers and peer tutor students can support knowledge creation through co-invention.