This story is part of a series on the winners of the 2023 President’s Award for Innovation in Student Learning and Success:
There’s a space at Niagara College campuses where students, staff, and faculty can test the limits of their creativity and bring ideas from their imagination to life.
That space is the NC Libraries and Learning Commons’ Exploratory, a digital media lab and makerspace equipped with the latest and greatest technology and software for anyone to use.
The spaces – curated and overseen by the NC Libraries and Learning Commons team – is home to software and equipment for filming and editing videos, recording audio, designing graphics, as well as virtual reality headsets and equipment for creating marketing material and prototypes including a 3D printer, button maker, and Cricut machine.
“We are immensely proud to facilitate the operation of this service, as it helps to foster student creativity and ingenuity, as well as helping to make students feel comfortable using new, or unfamiliar, technologies, a skill set that will make them employable in the ever-growing digital economy,” said Matt Bohun, Library Facilitator Info Literacy.
With an emphasis on promoting digital literacy, the Exploratory enables students of all abilities to experiment with newer technologies, whose cost of use may be prohibitive to some. The Exploratory gives students hands-on experience to confront challenges and obstacles and the chance to work to overcome them. The space is an example of NC’s trailblazing spirit and is linked with many aspects of the Strategic Plan.
Manager of the Library and Learning Commons, Gordana Vitez, Library Facilitators of Info Literacy, Bohun and Siscoe Boschman, have led the development and facilitation of the space, earning themselves the coveted President’s Award for Innovation in Student Learning and Success for 2023.
“We hope winning this award will shine a light on one of the many services that NC Libraries and Learning Commons’ offers Niagara College students and inspire brand new students to come and make use of our space,” said Boschmann.
Since the full return to on-campus activities in the Fall 2022 Term, the Exploratories at both the Welland Campus and the Daniel J. Patterson Campus in Niagara-on-the-Lake has been reserved close to 200 times, mostly by student groups.
To support growing interest, the Welland Campus Exploratory moved in the spring into a bigger space in the lower part of the Learning Commons. The space is better equipped to support student video projects and is in a constant stage of renewal, recently adding a fifth 3D printer.
The Exploratory in Niagara-on-the-Lake will soon be reconfigured to better meet the demand for the podcasting station with a set-up more appropriate for host/guest type projects. The space is also home to its first musical instrument – a CasioTone keyboard that allows students to add their own arrangements to projects.
This May, CICE co-op student Connor Gill will help ncLibrary staff take inventory and reorganize the Exploratory.
With the innovation funds, Bohun will attend the Inclusive Makerspace Conference at the University of British Columbia, the theme of which is focused on EDI, decolonization, and anti-racism in the context of designing inclusive makerspaces. He hopes to bring his learning back to NC to advance the Exploratory and support the commitments in NC’s EDI Blueprint.
Boschman will attend the International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces in Atlanta and hopes to learn about integrating makerspaces into curriculum, turning users of makerspaces into a community, best practices for diversity and inclusion in makerspaces, and more.
