"VIRTUALLY" A MAKER: MAKING IN AN ONLINE GRADUATE COURSE

Makerspaces have become established as communal and collaborative environments for making meaning, solving problems, and developing essential global skills and competencies. However, these spaces are commonly utilized by makers who are geographically co-located. In this qualitative study, we explored the intersection of a maker approach to learning and the affordances of online education—specifically, learning in one's own community by accessing the online course remotely as opposed to traveling to a physical classroom, and connecting the learning/making activities directly to one's home context—in a graduate-level course focused on critical making. We also discuss the theory and methods that informed the development and implementation of this course, given a recent shift from the use of traditional teacher-centered pedagogies in online learning. Our results suggest that the online course acted as a supportive community of inquiry that both scaffolded students' independent exploration of making in their local communities and facilitated continuous, collaborative learning through an effective blend of synchronous and asynchronous technologies. The need for a platform that enabled ongoing, organic sharing and connection between students was also highlighted.