Courses
From Ideas to Objects: 3D Printing and Modeling
From Ideas To Objects: 3D Printing and Modeling Courses
We offer courses both on campus and online. We started as the first business school based MakerLab in early 2013 and have had thousands of students, faculty, staff, community members, small businesses, and corporates learn about 'making'. We have had over 21,000 hours of printing done in the lab, and were lucky to get a new year gift of new printers with our partnership with Ultimaker. We have had a few new partners support our lab, notable among them being Autodesk and Caterpillar.
We have held over a 100 workshops annually since 2016, held our first high school robotics and 3D printing workshop in summer 2015, and introduced a new Design Thinking workshop for kids in summer 2016. We have also supported the MakerGirls run another 80 workshops for encouraging girls age 7-11 consider careers in STEM. We launched our first conference on 3D printing in Fall 2015, with presentations by industry leaders and academics. We continue to offer the full semester course on Making Things to our campus students every Spring.
Online Courses
However, our courses/workshops and our outreach are constrained by the physical space we have at the lab and what a few of us can do in terms of outreach. To address this constraint, we have taken 3D Printing and Modeling education online, to the world.
The University of Illinois has been an innovator in the Massive Open Online Education space, with several courses on 'tap' or on demand 24x7. The College of Business has launched the Online MBA, and we have had great success with our first offering in Digital Marketing. The first course in the series "Marketing in a Digital World" was ranked in the top 10 courses on Coursera in 2015.
We decided to use this platform for spreading 3D Printing and Modeling to the world. We are fortunate to have Ultimaker as a partner for the course on Hardware and Autodesk for the course on Software. The two co-founders of the lab, Aric Rindfleisch and Vishal Sachdev, will be offering the first two courses exploring the 3D Printing revolution and applications, followed by Jeff Smith @Autodesk for the course on Software or 3D Modeling covering sketchbook (for 2D sketching), tinkercad and Fusion 360 (for 3D Modeling). Matt Griffin from Ultimaker will lead the hardware course, where students will learn about how the technology works, and even learn how to assemble/teardown 3D printers, if they are interested. These four courses will be followed by a capstone project, where students will apply their learning to 'make' something digitally. We will be partnering up with Hubs, to provide our learners access to thousands of printers globally, and Shapeways.
We are building this innovative corporate/academic partnership to deliver an online course, that also allows users to bring their ideas to life as physical objects.
Making Things
The Making Things course has been offered every spring since 2014 and will continue. The "Making Things" course is offered by Dr. Aric Rindfleisch. Course Code is BADM 331. The goal of this course is to give students a hands-on experience making things. Since this is a hands-on course, there will be no exams and few lectures. Instead, we will engage in experiential learning, trial and error, and sharing our ideas with others. Specifically, students will plan, design, make, and market a new thing. Their grade will be largely based on the market success of the thing they make. Have a look at what the students made last year. The students are a balanced mix from business, engineering, and art & design. This course has become quite popular, and we have three times as many applications as seats.
Updates from the course are available on the Making Things course page.
How to Apply: The course is typically offered in the Spring semester on Wednesdays 5:00 to 7:50 pm, in BIF 3030, the MakerLab. If you are an Illinois undergraduate student and interested in taking the class, please send your resume to the instructor (Aric@illinois.edu). Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. Please contact the instructor for current application deadlines. We get about three applicants for each spot (21 seats).
Digital Making Seminar
Note: This course is no longer offered. It was last offered in Spring 2019.
The Digital Making Seminar (BADM 357) was offered by Dr. Vishal Sachdev. The course explored the third industrial revolution and helped students get trained on tools and technologies for making things. Students learned about 3D scanning, modeling and printing to rapidly prototype products, experimented with open hardware/micro-controllers such as Arduinos, and explored the concept of the internet of things through e-textiles and smaller form factors.
Historical information and updates from when the course was offered are available on the Digital Making course page.