LibGuides: Innovation Studio: Faculty Resources

Faculty Resources

Have Class in the Innovation Studio

The Innovation Studio is your gateway to revolutionizing education through hands-on experiences and cutting-edge technology. Here's how you can harness the power of our Innovation Studio to enrich your teaching:

Experiential Learning: Transform abstract concepts into tangible experiences. Engage your students with immersive projects that bring theories to life, fostering deeper understanding and retention.
Innovative Assignments: Inspire creativity by assigning projects that encourage students to design, prototype, and present their ideas. Watch them develop problem-solving skills while creating real-world solutions.
Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration: Break down traditional silos by collaborating with colleagues from various fields. Our Makerspace provides a common ground for interdisciplinary projects, sparking fresh perspectives and groundbreaking ideas.
Tech-Infused Teaching: Integrate technology seamlessly into your curriculum. From 3D printing to virtual reality, our Makerspace offers tools that allow you to explore new teaching methods and engage tech-savvy students.
Real-World Applications: Equip students with skills applicable in the modern job market. Through Innovation Studio projects, they'll gain practical experience and build a portfolio that sets them apart in their future careers.
Showcase Opportunities: Spotlight your students' creations in exhibitions or presentations. Highlight their accomplishments and inspire others to explore the limitless possibilities of hands-on learning.

Sample Assignments

The possibilities of how one can incorporate the tools, technology, and equipment into their courses is endless. One resource to spark ideas is the Lawrence University Interdisciplinary Makerspace for Engaged Learning's blog post on Makerspace Assignments by Subject. There are many opportunities to increase student engagement there.

Schedule a session with the David Williams, Emerging Technologies and Digital Initiatives Librarian, to customize a session specific to your course requirements.

Assignment Ideas

3D Printed Atomic Molecules

XULA Students 3D printed atomic models to create their own atomic model kits

Credit: Lawrence U Makerspace for Engaged Learning

SpecPhone

SpecPhone is a 3D printed spectrometer by Adam W. Smith of the University of Akron, created or modified 3D patterns and printed them on the 3D printers, and will design their own instruments and instrument housing.

Human Vestibular System Models

Anatomy and Physiology students used 3D modeling and CAD software to design interactive inner ear modules to demonstrate their proficiency of the anatomy

Resources on Design Thinking, Iterative Design, and Making

Teaching 21st Century Skills by Rekha B. Koul; Rachel Sheffield; Leonie McIlvenny
ISBN: 9789811643606
Publication Date: 2021-11-11
This book helps educators provide opportunities for their students to engage in creative and collaborative projects that blur the lines between subjects and promote problem-finding and problem-solving activities. It offers a global perspective on makerspaces through an Indian and Australian lens, illustrating the commonalities between the approach and the pedagogy in order to highlight the universal nature of these essential 21st-century skills. The book is particularly useful for science, technology and mathematics teachers, highlighting the potential of engaging in a more integrated curriculum approach to their specific discipline. It is of great interest to scholars whose research focuses on understanding 21st-century skills and how they can be taught and assessed in a school setting. It is an indispensable resource for teacher educators, school administrators, curriculum designers, policymakers and researchers in the field of science education.
Makerspaces in first-year engineering education by Taheri, Pooya ; Robbins, Philip ; Maalej, Sirine
Publication Date: 2020
Langara College, as one of the leading undergraduate institutions in the province of British Columbia (BC), offers the “Applied Science for Engineering” two-year diploma program as well as the “Engineering Transfer” two-semester certificate program. Three project-based courses are offered as part of the two-year diploma program in Applied Science (APSC) and Computer Science (CPSC) departments: “APSC 1010—Engineering and Technology in Society”, “CPSC 1090—Engineering Graphics”, and “CPSC 1490—Applications of Microcontrollers”, with CPSC 1090 and CPSC 1490 also part of the Engineering Transfer curriculum. Although the goals, scopes, objectives, and evaluation criteria of these courses are different, the main component of all three courses is a group-based technical project. Engineering students have access to Langara College’s Makerspace for the hands-on component of their project. Makerspaces expand experiential learning opportunities and allows students to gain a skillset outside the traditional classroom. This paper begins with a detailed review of the maker movement and the impact of makerspace in higher education. Different forms of makerspace and the benefits of incorporating them on first-year students’ creativity, sense of community, self-confidence, and entrepreneurial skills are discussed. This paper introduces Langara’s engineering program and its project-based design courses. Langara’s interdisciplinary makerspace, its goals and objectives, equipment, and some sample projects are introduced in this paper in detail. We then explain how the group-project component of APSC 1010, CPSC 1090, and CPSC 1490 are managed and how using makerspace improves students’ performance in such projects. In conclusion, the paper describes the evaluation of learning outcomes via an anonymous student survey.