Preparing students for the digital era: lessons learned from FabLabs in school

In this study, we randomly expose Italian high school students from different majors to creative activities taught by FabLabs and assess the impact of this exposition on students’ career aspirations, university choice, interest and confidence in STEM university courses, attitude towards STEM subjects, creativity, and grit. We find that giving students the possibility to join FabLab activities has overall a positive impact on all the variables assessed, except for career aspirations and creativity. This working paper represents a preliminary assessment and is limited to estimating the effect of having the possibility to join FabLab activities. A refined analysis will also investigate the effect on students who have participated in the activities, for whom we expect to find a stronger positive effect.