MAKEADEMY

The Project

According to the National Academy of Engineering, engineers today work in diverse and diffuse teams, often across time zones and national borders. However, shortly engineers will have an even more diverse environment to work in and more significant humanity’s issues to solve than ever before. The project highlights and addresses three main problems:

1. Sense of innovation, critical thinking, and a holistic view are significant capabilities for engineers. However, activities intended to develop these abilities are missing (or are not fully applied) in HE study programmes. Modern world engineers need to solve problems from innovative, sustainable and social perspectives.

2. In Europe, there is a lack of engineering study programs based on CDIO (conceive-design-implement-operate) methodology, which adds the transdisciplinary approach to the learning practices. Instead, study programs usually are created based on a traditional and well-known project- and problem-based learning method (PBL).

3. The innovative and modern engineering education programs usually have limited availability (e.g. study programs available to a particular HEI or a specific network (e.g. to members of Design Factory Global Network or FabLabs).

Therefore, the “Makers Academy: Developing Future Engineer’s Skills” (MAKEADEMY) project addresses the need to supplement the HE engineering study programs with an innovative solution-oriented and widely available program as a platform to recognise and engage with the macro-ethical, adaptive and cross-disciplinary challenges embedded in professional issues. With this need, the MAKEADEMY project aims to develop the soft & missing skillset of future engineers, which are not just technicians but also are sustainable world creators taking account of the transdisciplinary perspective & with the incentive of solving real-life problems from multiple perspectives.

Our Contribution

Creating the Open Educational Resources (OER) for skills development: The developed study materials on rapid prototyping will improve students’ technical skills, provide better knowledge of what the labor market needs, and also will foster digital fabrication and use of digital tools.

Who is it for

• Higher Education (HE) Institutions
  Who wish to increase & strengthen the HE engineering studies with innovative study module;
• HE Students
  Which will be prepared for the fast-changing labor market with their gained skills for innovation.
• Makerspaces and other creative Technical spaces
  Who wish to empower their infrastructure while implementing OERs (O2&O3) in their daily work.
• Other creative Communities and members of Society
• Workers of public libraries, primary school teachers, etc.), who wish to gain skills in rapid prototyping and use it in their daily work or for individual reasons.

Project Number: 2021-1-LT01-KA220-HED-000032213