qc makerspace
TRANSCRIPT
QC MakerspaceAY’20 Annual Report
This report was not conceived until after AY’21 was already underway - in fact not until the Fall’20 semester had begun. That’s a technical clarification and novelty because CUNY consider the Academic Year (“AY”) to begin with the Summer preceding the primary Fall and Spring semesters. Thus this report for AY’20 spans 2019-05-29 to 2020-05-28.1
I will do my best to write anecdotes and asides from the vantage of an early Summer 2020 editor, but at this point it is impossible to be entirely retroactively objective. That is because at the time of this draft we are ~9 months into the COVID-19 pandemic. Rosenthal Library effectively closed its doors after Friday, March 13th. Throughout the preceding year we made many plans for the Summer and beyond. Then it was all thrown into question — like the rest of the world. Just a few months ago it was unknown where the makerspace, where Rosenthal Library, and indeed where the world was heading. That is to say the feeling now is good - or at least better - than where we were earlier this year.
A vaccine is currently being dispensed and will eventually be available to all who wish it. I definitely wish it, and yearn to be compiling our second report this upcoming Summer from the perspective of someone who has been vaccinated and can begin rebuilding on-site operations for hands-on learning.
After all that is the purpose of a makerspace. To grip tools. To experiment with materials. To take notes about works in progress. To share ideas with peers — to hear their feedback and thoughts. To expand our minds, together. This has been a tough year, but we will be back soon. For now we will reflect on where we were before and after this pandemic began.2 I hope to see you in the QC Makerspace at some point in 2021!
Nick Normal, Head of QC MakerspaceDecember 2020
1. For filekeeping and datelogging I use the ISO 8601 extended format. Your files will always be easier to find this way. (See xkcd 1179 for more info.)2. All the statistical data in this report must be slightly caveated: Rosenthal Library closed its doors mid-March and thus we do not have complete year-over-year (YOY) data for on-site operations.
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BY THE NUMBERS: Operations and Transactions
Staff in the QC Makerspace record all encounters in a digital dashboard. The term of art this dashboard uses to compile logs is “transactions” - thus you will see this word used frequently. A transaction could range from 15 seconds to 90 minutes or longer. The transaction record has metadata attached to compile statistics. Analytics allow us to make data-driven decisions or to test ideas and reflect on their impact.
Transactions recorded
2,002Top 3 busiest months & respective transactionsFebruary 2020, 327October 2019, 314
December 2019, 289
Orientation onboarding launched
October 2019
Orientations given
199*
* includes Staff and Students
Staffing
1 Full-time “Head” of department2 Part-time College Assistants 1 Federal Work Study student
Hours of OperationOur doors were open
28 hours/week
Hours employed
• “Head” of department: 35 hours/week• Part-time CAs: 816 hours• FWS student: 399 hours
Tours given
21
Busiest day
WednesdayWednesday alone accounted for 28% of our transactions; Wednesday and Monday combined accounted for 53% of our weekly transactions.
Service type
1171 (58%) of our transactions were “IRL” (in-person)
(34% of transactions were conducted via email, largely due to shift online after COVID-19.)
Who asked
47% of transactions were with Undergraduate students; 24% with Faculty & Staff; 7% with Vendors. 5% was with our emerging “NSF Team” (explained later) and the remaining was with various smaller sets of users or outside affiliates.
How long did it take
360transactions required more than 1 hour — these could include orientations, tours, or workshops.
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*
* no weekend hours
BY THE NUMBERS: Budget, and Online Traffic
Our last two primary buckets of data are our budget, and the traffic we generate online. These two datasets are by no means linked, but we believe them both important with regards to transparency, and to underscore our pre-pandemic goal to provide as much content and information as possible online (this goal was expedited with the onset of the pandemic and will be expanded upon in future annual reports with more recent ‘remote learning’ initiatives).
Departmental Budget Allocation
$10,000Departmental Budget Spent
$9,918.22$10K is below our baseline operational budget, but you work with what you get. This funding was barely able to procure core consumables (namely for 3D-printing and our laser cutter/etcher) and was instead primarily used for basic lab & office supplies (what we now broadly call PPE, writing utensils, tape & label-maker tape) as well as items like light bulbs & a shelving unit for a specific location. No lab furniture or IT equipment was procured with this budget.
Student Tech Fee FY19-20 Budget Allocation
$15,000Student Tech Fee FY19-20 Budget Spent
$12,682.88We attempted to spend the remaining $2,317.12 from the STF allocation but the funds were reclaimed by STF & ITS after the beginning of the pandemic. The funds that were spent include a high-end resin 3D-printer, and 3D-scanner — both of which arrived days before the pandemic shut down the campus. It is our hope to bring these appliances online by Fall’21, but adquate furniture and computer support is still required to deploy them properly.
WebsiteOur website (http://qcmaker.space) generates considerable traffic considering its audience and purpose. From June’19 through May’20 we had 3653 views from 2077 visitors. 1050 clicks were generated via search engines and social media. During this time we published 14 pieces of content. There are noticeable spikes the first full month of each semester (September & February) and then a gradual month-to-month decline. Lately we are seeing increased traffic from countries abroad.
InstagramInstagram is difficult to accurately measure without a paid service, but during this time we published ~64 grams and added ~36 followers to our feed. (We used three different services during this time to track Instagram interactions, so this data is admittedly porous.)
TwitterTwitter analytics are incredibly robust — built right into the platform, they’re very accurate & detailed, and the platform generally yields considerable engagement. During AY’20 we published 342 tweets that generated 131 retweets, 364 likes, and 181,600 total impressions. Because our Twitter launched prior to AY’19 (the preceding academic year) this is one of the few places where we have YOY data. Our growth is nominal with engagment and interactions effectively plateaued relative to the number of tweets published. But in other words: publish a tweet, get traffic.
* We are also thankful to Student Tech Fee for the procurement of a safety enclosure for our Shopbot Desktop MAX CNC. The allocation was for $2,000 with $1895 spent to procure it.
Visit http://qcmaker.space for updates and remote learning content.You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at username qcmakerspace.
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Events : Mending Mondays
After a successful pilot the previous year, we continued with installments during AY’20 of Mending Mondays — “the first Monday of every month all we do is fix stuff.” Seen here is double-major Anthony P. who repaired a loose-wire connection inside a pair of wired headphones with the aid of a Hakko FX-888D soldering station. Unfortunately the final two events of AY’20 never occurred due to campus closure from COVID-19. We hope to continue with this event in future years.
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Workshop: Soldering is Easy!
We facilitated a soldering workshop for 24 students of the CUNY Service Corps “World of Work” courseat QC. After learning the fun-damentals of soldering students later accessed the makerspace to assemble a “solar USB kit” designed by Brown Dog Gadgets. The kit was used to demonstrate how ‘technical skill’ can be applied to disaster relief — in this case using a solar-powered USB charger to recharge mobile devices for instance in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria downed power lines.
Soldering can seem esoteric until you learn the basics. But with good equipment, simple instructions, and even a comic book to aid in understanding, students realize soldering is easy (and fun!) and that learning this skill opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
An ELMO Visual Presenter is used to display up-close, detailed work to an audience who An ELMO Visual Presenter is used to display up-close, detailed work to an audience who watch via a large screen TV attached to the ELMO via VGA.watch via a large screen TV attached to the ELMO via VGA.
Students watch a YouTube video on a mobile device, following step-by-step instructions to Students watch a YouTube video on a mobile device, following step-by-step instructions to assemble a solar-powered USB charger kit. Assembly takes approximately 30-60 minutes.assemble a solar-powered USB charger kit. Assembly takes approximately 30-60 minutes.
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Other Notable Milestones During AY’20:
• Published our first two ‘trifolds’ — pamphlets providing orientation information about 1) the lab and 2) 3D-printing. These pamphlets help us guide users towards ‘FAQ’-esque information and resources.
• Hosting the Queens College Knights Robotics club.
• Partnering with HoloCenter - Center for the Holographic Arts to 3D-scan a large object that was then placed in a virtual reality environment in their exhibition Draw Within Water on Governors Island in late 2019.
• Giving a presentation about the QC Makerspace to the LACUNY Emerging Technologies Roundtable.
• Eclipsing 1,000 transactions during the Fall’19 semester. (Before the pandemic struck we were certain we were going to eclipse 1,000 “IRL” (in-person) transactions during Spring’20.)
• In January 2020 the “NSF Team” mentioned earlier in this document assembled their first meeting of the minds since being recognized with a National Science Foundation award. In partnership with the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) a group of QC Faculty and Staff were awarded a grant to research the impact of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) courses at Queens College. The QC Makerspace will play a pivotal role in this research for the next 4 academic years. Shortly after our in-person meetings began the pandemic struck — we have since migrated our entire operation online but are eager for in-person classes in the makerspace hopefully by Fall’21. Classes likely aligned with this initiative include ARTS249, ARTS282, ARTS370, CSCI100, ENSCI112, MATH128, & PHYS1.4+1.1 – others may be added in the future.
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