Michigan Tech Prof Posts 3D Printing Course to Wikiversity

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 02/26/19

A professor at Michigan Technological University has just open-sourced his 3D printing course on Wikiversity. According to Joshua Pearce, an professor of electrical and computer engineering, the course is built around a set of "progressively more challenging exercises" intended to teach students how to work with free 3D design tools OpenSCAD, FreeCAD and Blender, "so they can solve just about any 3D printing design challenges."

The curriculum is being used in an engineering course taught to both undergraduates and graduates to help them understand 3D printing. The difference, according to Pearce, is that he expects the master's students to "do everything the undergraduates do," while almost improving on the do-it-yourself printers and publishing their mods.

Pearce reported that other universities that have adopted some version of the course have either made a 3D printer lab available to students, loaned out 3D printers or had them assemble their own using the JellyBox kit.

The course is openly available on Wikiversity, a Wikimedia project for making learning resources available to all.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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