Presenting the Secure Collapsible Makerspace with Biometric Authentication

Abstract

Traditional product design learning is inefficient, costly, and limited by safety concerns in physical and smaller-scale school workshops. The Secure Collapsible Makerspace is a mobile makerspace with smart sensors and an expandable work area facility. This study aims to develop a smart mobile makerspace platform using edge computing architecture and the biometric security model to compare real-time learners’ engagement time and design performance. The developed platform consists of four blocks that provide service as a makerspace for the learners and monitor their utilization in a secure environment. The edge computing architecture allows real-time analysis of the users’ makerspace utilization. A total of 750 learners were accessed for their product design outcome which presented a positive correlation of 0.72 between the engagement time and the design assessment with a corresponding p-value less than 0.001. This study concludes that makerspaces can be a platform that improves students’ performance in hands-on activity-related learning.