Some of these differences, like broad educational experiences and lifelong learning, are unsurprising. Adult makers have, during the course of their lives, been exposed to more levels of education and greater variety in terms of career and experiences than makers 30 years their junior. Two areas of importance however are found in designing and conducting experiments and computer aided design. Older makers were much more likely to see themselves as conducting experiments through their iterative design process than young makers. We hypothesize that this is due to the more formal exposure to the scientific method that adults would have received in college. This finding could also be interpreted as suggesting that Making could be a form of scientific inquiry in the classroom if students were guided in the process.
Finally, more than twice as many young makers explicitly mentioned using computer aided
design tools in their projects. In many cases, this seemed to be due to being formally introduced to tools such as SketchUp or TinkerCAD in the classroom. The early introduction of CAD software to young Makers could set them up for success when they are introduced to such programs again in a college setting.
The Maker Mindset and Maker skills are equally applicable to the proposed ABET Criteria for Student Outcomes. For the purposes of this study, as discussed above, the proposed revisions for ABET Student Outcomes can be seen as a combination of existing a-k standards. Where makers appear to shine under the revised Student Outcomes are communications skills (4), the application of technology to solve problems in a social context (1, 2, and 5), and their ability to engage in self-directed learning (6). When taken as a whole, Makers are learning to identify and solve problems they care about using technology.