Reflection 2025-12-06 by Richel

• Evaluation results
• Reflection

I think this season went well.

The biggest changes were:

• The addition of a cooking course, as lead by Store Björn and assisted by Johanna
• Maturation of the Gyllene Rummet, as lead by Leonid and Herman
• No Arduino volunteer, yet more Arduino learners
• AtomBjörn upgrading the reception desk
• AtomBjörn collecting parents' phone numbers

Course attendance

Taking the average number of learners per year, the course seems to grow:

However, this growth can be explained by how attendance is measured: if a learners takes more courses, he/she is counted multiple times. We can conclude that we have increased attendance over the day.

By other means, the numbers of learners seems to have stabilized: here we plot the distribution of the learners over the year:

This graph shows when in the year, most learners are present. Where 2022 shows that most learners attend at the end of the year, this shows a growth. Where 2024 and 2025 show that learners show up equally over the year. This hints that growth may have stopped.

When looking at the last season on its own, we see a slight decrease:

This decrease, however, seems to be most explained by the outlier at the end. Removing it, seems to hint that growth may have stopped.

Taking a look at course attendence over the last season:

Adding a trendline and showing the equation to get the slope:

From this, per course, we can see how many learners for a course per month:

Course	Change of learners per day	Change of learners per 30 days
Arduino	0.018	0.54
Laser	-0.0122	-0.366
Roblox	-0.0264	-0.792
Cooking	-0.0309	-0.927
Godot	-0.0383	-1.149
Processing	-0.0594	-1.782
Blender	-0.0619	-1.857

Arduino is growing for unknown reasons. I really have no idea what is so attractive there ...? Blender and Processing are the courses that are taking the biggest dives. Also here, I have no idea why this is. In summary: I have no idea why the attendance of courses go up or down.

Before deciding to take action, let's take at the bigger picture:

The vertical scale has a big range, because of Efterfarsdag was a big success.

Let's zoom in a bit on regular course attendance:

Based on this graph, I would say course attendance has a high variability and seems stable.

Learners stay long, with seven that have stayed all seven seasons of the course:

n_terms	n_learners
1	157
2	42
3	19
4	13
5	11
6	3
7	5

This means that from the 157 there are (157 - 42 - 19 - 13 - 11 - 3 - 5 =) 64 that leave the course within one season. This means ((157 - 64) / 157 =) 60% have properly been part of the course.

I tend to reflect after a season of Lördagskurserna. In case you are interested, my thoughts about the courses can be found at this LK webpage. Some highlights:

In conclusion, I would say that attendance and course attendance have stopped growing. and no action seems needed.

Team

Course	Team before	Team after	Verdict
Cooking	Store Björn	Store Björn, Johanna	Great!
Arduino	Fredrik	None	Could use a volunteer here
Blender	Store Björn	Store Björn	Seems good
Processing	Christoffer,Dennis,Janne,Sjoerd	Christoffer,Fredrik,Janne	A group that can be relied upon
Reception desk	AtomBjörn	AtomBjörn	A person that can be relied upon
Laser	Lars	Lars	Unpredictable when someone is present
Vinyl cutter	None	None	Could use a volunteer here

The team consists out of 7 people, of which 1 new. I am quite proud how this -quite experienced- team rolls.

Finances

As I have no access to the finances, I have no idea how many parents pay the half-yearly course fee. I can imagine AtomBjörn gets questions about this and that parents pay their dues. On the other hand, I can perfectly imagine parents forgetting this.

• [/] Check with finances person (I do not remember the name) how many people paid for the course the last half year
  • Contacted person on 2025-12-14

Additionally, Uppsala Kommun donated 250k kroner to UMS, largely to the LK. Below the relevant snippet from the UMS Newsletter:

Uppsala Municipality has granted our association an operating grant of SEK 250,000 for children's and young people's free time for 2026. The support depends largely on our Saturday courses, where there are many children. The municipality also takes into account that children and young people under 26 are members of our association and enjoy the workshops to work on their own projects.

With that donation, I think we cannot be in the negative whatever I would do :-)

Evaluation results

New is that also parents were allowed to fill in suggestions: these are quite helpful ones.

What goes well:

• Bra som det är, kommer inte på ngt
• Matlagning
• Ha kul!
• Kul
• Lektioner
• Matlagningskurser (allt på den)!
• Mentorskop (äldre barn lär yngre/nyare)
• Keep all the patience you have
• Great job!
• Jättebra. Tack för allt jobb ni gör!
• Fortsätt vara som det är. Uppsala Makerspace är bäst!
• Keep working like it is!
• Nästan allt
• Baka mera kakor
• Vi är otroligt nöjda med allt! Speciellt att deltagarna får mer ansvar, får hjälpa varandra unsv. Tack!
• The cooking courses are such a nice addition this year. Our kid loves his time at Makerspace. Thanks so much for volunteering your time to enrich kids' lives. You are making good memories for them
• Kurserna är lärorik och inspirerande. Många praktiska övning. Väl organiserade. Personalen är mycket hjälpsam och snäll
• Fortsätt som ni gör, allt är toppen
• Laga mat
• Tack för allt ni gör
• Ni har en välkommande undervisning som passar barnens utveckling!
• All is perfect! Thanks you for offering this

This is all nice.

What could be improved?

• Jag önskar att barnen kan ha fler lektionstillfällen i veckan, speciellt för de barn som är intresserade och vill fördjupa sig mer
• Lördag + söndag + lärogutecreater

This will be impossible without more volunteers

• Minecraft modding kurs
• Making couse for Minecraft and Robloxs

This will be impossible without a volunteer teaching this

• Matlagningskurs: mera mat som inte kräver värme (some kan göra ensam nima hemma)

I think this is an interesting suggestion! I am not the boss about this course, but I will let them know :-)

• Let cooking course know about a suggestion to learn to cook food that does not require heating (and hence, can be done when home alone)

• Programmering: her ett project från början av terminen (type: jag ska lära mig att skriva 10 rader kod, jag ska få min 3D modell utprintad)

I think this is an interesting idea.

• Consider how to get more project-based work in

• Tomt

• Empty
• Kanske hitta ett störe rum för det Gyllene Rummet

I enjoy the suggestion. I do think it is even better that the room is small: it helps enforce stricter rules.

• Tuggummi i shopen
• [A heart]
• I honestly cannot think of anything. Maybe eile parents who can contribute can be told how? I'm sure some of the food and ingredients cost money, for example. We parents can always offer, though

I am sure -even more thanks to this suggestions- that parents are quite willing to help. I will forward this suggestion to the cooking course.

• Let cooking course know that parents can help to do the shopping

• Barn är mycket gläda att de ha ett plats att göra någonting speciellt och rolig. Tack!

• Som vi upplever de verkar allt fungera jättebra. Sonen är väldigt nöjd och trivs
• Skapa en bok/häfte med recepter

I know the cooking course is pondering doing so. Maybe this suggestion will encourage them even more to do so.

• Let cooking course know about a suggestion to create a recipe book

• Peppa gärna barnen att göra projekt, eller saker, tillsammans. Vissa barn kan behöva lite social training. Även push för att alla ska fika samtidigt

• Veckobrev, tack!

There is an emaillist, but it is not used weekly. I see that there are twenty people on the list, including me twice, hence 18 real users :-)

Future plans

• Consider how to get more project-based work in
• Let cooking course know about a suggestion to learn to cook food that does not require heating (and hence, can be done when home alone)
• Let cooking course know that parents can help to do the shopping
• Let cooking course know about a suggestion to create a recipe book

Also, there needs to be more booklets about Arduino: we have our first ever Swedish learner that finished all booklets!

Offline Simulators:

• Fritzing: awesome, 8 USD, programming does not work yet
• Proteus: commerial, not free

• SimulIDE:

• UNOArdusim: Windows only, download

Arduino IO Simulator| Paulware Arduino Simulator

Online Simulators:

• Tinkercad: requires an email address, strict on COPPA
• PICSIMLAB
• WOKWI
• Microsoft Maker Code
• Virtualbreadboard

Conclusion

• Course attendance seems stable (i.e. not growing anymore)
• Learners stay long: we have 5 that have stayed all 7 seasons (!)
• The team is experienced (hence easy to works with), yet too small
• The evaluation results are very positive, although there is a selection bias that happy participants tend to stay :-)
• Much praise and suggestions for the new cooking course
• Financially we seem to do fine