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A fresh model for public science

The Glitch'n community circuit and internship

How Glitch'n spreads: people who learn to build circuits go on to teach others.

A public pop-up at Burton Barr Central Library, Phoenix, July 19, 2025.

A HOMAGO*-infused internship

Course graduates, ages 14 to 20, can join CTRL (Community Tech Research and Leadership), a paid internship running pop-ups with our teaching and research team. The three zones are their training ground: interns watch how visitors move through the room and make it better each time.

The three Glitch'n posters: Hang out! Chill, listen and learn. Mess around! Push a button or turn a knob! Geek out! Glitch a circuit!
* HOMAGO: hanging out, messing around, geeking out. Three ways young people take part in learning (Ito et al., 2019).

Technical skills

Computational thinking, circuit basics, troubleshooting electronics

Facilitation skills

Planning a pop-up, asking guiding questions, putting words to what visitors hear

Job skills

Work ethic, teamwork, problem solving

Preparation and practice

Interns set up the room themselves: signs in place, tables laid out, every circuit tested.

Before each pop-up, interns train with our team. Short questionnaires track what they are learning.

Each group seeds the next

Everyone starts as a builder. Builders who want more are paid to run pop-ups. Facilitators who keep going co-teach, then lead a course, and the people they teach start the loop again.

The community circuit A loop of three roles. Builder (hanging out) leads to Facilitator (messing around), paid to run pop-ups. Facilitator leads to Leader (geeking out), paid to co-teach. Leader teaches the next group of builders. Each group seeds the next. runs pop-ups · paid co-teaches · paid teaches the next group BUILDER Hang out! FACILITATOR Mess around! LEADER Geek out! runs pop-ups · paid co-teaches · paid teaches the next group BUILDER Hang out! FACILITATOR Mess around! LEADER Geek out!

We start the circuit in a new place with a few teachers from the ASU Glitch'n Studio. Over time, local graduates take over the teaching.

Why a beginner can teach

Everyone learns a few baseline designs by heart. Inventing means changing one, and that often breaks the circuit. A facilitator doesn't need to know why. They steer it back to a baseline that works.

Baseline, invent, glitch, steer back A builder starts from a baseline design. Varying, extending or modifying it makes something new. Sometimes the change breaks the circuit: it glitches or goes silent. A facilitator steers it back to the working baseline, and the builder tries again. vary · extend · modify sometimes it breaks a facilitator steers it back BASELINE Build it again and again. INVENT! Make it your own. GLITCH! ...or it goes silent. vary · extend · modify sometimes it breaks a facilitator steers it back BASELINE Build it again and again. INVENT! Make it your own. GLITCH! ...or it goes silent.

You don't have to know everything. You have to know the baselines.

A classroom of young people building circuits at tables, a lesson on the screen at the front Seen from above: a table with kits, tablets playing the lessons, and breadboards in progress A builder places a part on his breadboard while the lesson video plays on a tablet
The course, June 2025, at the ASU MIX Center in Mesa: everyone builds the same baseline designs, following the video.

Why it works

Ideas from the learning sciences, museums and electronic music.

  • 90%of course participants said their interest in a technical career grew
  • 30 / 58course participants applied to be paid facilitators
  • 93%of pop-up visitors felt more confident with circuits

2025 end-of-course survey (58 participants; Pivovarova et al., 2026) and pop-up exit survey (96 visitors, ages 6 to 91).

References
  1. Akinbadewa, B., Reutlinger, C., Vasquez, A. M., & Thorn, S. (2026). From frustration to creativity: Exploring how neurodiversity-affirming learning contexts transform uncertainty into strengths. Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2026), 177–186. ISLS.
  2. Barron, B., Martin, C. K., Takeuchi, L., & Fithian, R. (2009). Parents as learning partners in the development of technological fluency. International Journal of Learning and Media, 1(2), 55–77.
  3. CAST. (2024). Universal Design for Learning guidelines version 3.0. udlguidelines.cast.org
  4. Collins, N. (2020). Handmade electronic music: The art of hardware hacking (3rd ed.). Routledge.
  5. Diamond, J., St. John, M., Cleary, B., & Librero, D. (1987). The Exploratorium's Explainer Program: The long-term impacts on teenagers of teaching science to the public. Science Education, 71(5), 643–656.
  6. Duran, D. (2017). Learning-by-teaching: Evidence and implications as a pedagogical mechanism. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 54(5), 476–484.
  7. Ito, M., et al. (2019). Hanging out, messing around, and geeking out: Kids living and learning with new media (10th anniversary ed.). MIT Press.
  8. Kapur, M. (2008). Productive failure. Cognition and Instruction, 26(3), 379–424.
  9. Larson, K., Ito, M., Brown, E., Hawkins, M., Pinkard, N., & Sebring, P. (2013). Safe space and shared interests: YOUmedia Chicago as a laboratory for connected learning. Digital Media and Learning Research Hub.
  10. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.
  11. Menkman, R. (2011). The glitch moment(um). Institute of Network Cultures.
  12. Petrich, M., Wilkinson, K., & Bevan, B. (2013). It looks like fun, but are they learning? In M. Honey & D. E. Kanter (Eds.), Design, make, play: Growing the next generation of STEM innovators (pp. 50–70). Routledge.
  13. Pivovarova, M., Reutlinger, C., Sanchez Chavarria, K., & Thorn, S. (2026). Building confidence in STEM one chip at a time. Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP), Chicago.
  14. Roscoe, R. D., & Chi, M. T. H. (2007). Understanding tutor learning: Knowledge-building and knowledge-telling in peer tutors' explanations and questions. Review of Educational Research, 77(4), 534–574.

Where we've been

The library auditorium full of visitors building circuits at round tables, with the Hang out and Geek out signs on easels
The public pop-up at Burton Barr Central Library, Phoenix, July 19, 2025.

July 2025, Burton Barr Central Library in Phoenix: fourteen graduates of our first courses became paid interns and ran three pop-ups. Here is the public one.

Phoenix Conservatory of Music, July 2026

Glitch'n began with an EAGER award from the National Science Foundation's Advancing Informal STEM Learning program (Award 2432637).

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