We report a 5-year study investigating how incorporating Making influenced learning in a college-level physics class for pre-service and in-service teachers and teacher leaders, based on Physics by Inquiry (McDermott & the University of Washington PEG, 1996). Following a knowledge-building framework (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006), we find that students’ home communities, the extended Maker community and the classroom community all interacted with individual learning to promote knowledge building, extending students’ knowledge of electric circuits. Elements of the instructional design for the Maker project promoted students’ personal engagement and persistence, and strengthened the knowledge building community. These were (1) freedom to choose personally meaningful projects, (2) freedom to use familiar and appropriate tools, (3) normalization of iteration and improvement in project requirements, and (4) setting a norm for sharing ideas in the classroom and broader communities. Statistical comparison of final exam results prior to and after adding the Maker component demonstrated that the addition did not diminish learning of the traditional conceptual canon as previously measured, even while activating students’ knowledge of electric circuits and developing broader skills and dispositions. These results are significant; without solid evidence base for its effectiveness (Bevan et al., Studies in Science Education 53(1), 75–103, 2020) and perceived costs of incorporating Making in terms of equipment, supplies and time away from the standard curriculum (Cohen, Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 25(1), 5–30 2017), it is very likely that we will miss the opportunity to realize the potential of Making in democratizing the curriculum (Blikstein et al., e-Curriculum 18(2), 523–544, 2020).
