The maker culture is a contemporary culture emphasizing learning-through-doing (active learning) in a social environment. Maker movement puts power in the hands of the people to fund, design, prototype, produce, manufacture, distribute, market and sell their own goods. This new trendy movement impacts global manufacturing as creation shifts geographically to local, philosophically to sustainability and legally to force the adaptation of new IP laws as people move from consuming to creating and sharing. The Circular / Sharing Economy impacts core business models and higher education (HE) must be ready to address the change by developing relevant competencies of graduates in order to secure innovation and growth. 3D printing is not only the main technology for prototyping, but also hyped as the technology to bring about the next industrial revolution. The overall market for 3D printing products and services which hit $2.2 billion in 2012 and was forecasted to grow to $4B in 2025 (IDTechEx, March 2014), actually hit $5.1 billion already in 2016. The comprehensive research has been done by project consortium analyzing around 100 university makerspaces, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Aalto University and other partners. The conclusions show that similar structures are emerging rapidly but they lack clear recognition frameworks, access guidance, strategic integration of university makerspaces into study process, networking between universities, public and private makerspaces and businesses. Thus the AIM of the HEI MAKERS project is to increase innovation and creativity through partnership of HEIs and technical spaces, leading to trans-disciplinary approaches and new teaching methods in HE, availability of open resources for formal and non formal education, better entrepreneurial and creativity skills of graduates. To achieve the aim, specific objectives were defined as follows: 1. Foster collaboration of HEIs, university and private makerspaces, and other businesses (addressed through developing Guidelines for HEI on employing a makerspace (O1)) 2. Amplify technological entrepreneurship and technical creativity as key competences (modules on technological entrepreneurship (O2) and technical creativity (O3, O5)) 3. Promote innovative education methods (training programme as university‘s summer school (O4, O5)) 4. Increase open resources based learning opportunities (initial package of training materials (on entrepreneurship (O2), 3D printing and rapid prototyping (O3, O5)) 5. Recognise competencies gained through active learning at makerspace as per programmes developed (O4) 6. Test the above-mentioned collaboration concept and ensure sustainability of results (5 multiplier events, including the first international conference on HEI and makerspace collaboration, and summer school) 7. Identify and attract new players who will join the next stages of the project (initial ideas for association or similar). The direct target group of the project is HEIs, their students, and technical spaces. HEIs are represented in the consortium through LT, LV and RO universities, covering 50+ thousand students. These are the countries with less advanced HE (as per QS World University Rankings) in Europe who need to employ modern teaching strategies in order to catch up with the leaders. Association of technical spaces (TEA) and a private makerspace Ludor (RO) represent technical spaces and ensure their involvement in the project through a number of stakeholders. Indirect target group is business and business support organisations, who employ skilled students or host startups in acceleration or business incubation programmes, represented by Inventya (UK) and SSMTP (LT). Project partners will develop 5 intellectual outputs: Guidelines for HEIs on how practically collaborate with technical spaces fin order to increase quality of HE; Training modules on technological entrepreneurship and technical creativity in 3D printing and rapid prototyping; Intensive study programme for international summer school to facilitate uptake of the collaboration concept; and a plugin for open software "Blender" allowing efficient implementation of O3 and O4. Partners will organise 5 multiplier events involving 200+ representatives of the target group and pilot the outputs during intensive study programme - university's international summer school. Project HEI MAKERS will encourage more HEIs to initiate collaboration with makerspaces and re-think their study programmes to employ innovative training methods and address the challenges of XXI century labour market. Project's outputs will open up new learning opportunities through practical application of entrepreneurial and prototyping skills, which can involve and lead to the commercialization of new services and products, to attracting potential investors, to creation of global start-ups and spin-offs and thus growing economy.
The maker culture is a contemporary culture emphasizing learning-through-doing or active learning in a social environment. Maker movement puts power in the hands of the people to fund, design, prototype, produce, manufacture, distribute, market and sell their own goods. This new trendy movement impacts global manufacturing as creation shifts geographically to local, philosophically to sustainability and legally to force the adaptation of new IP laws as people move from consuming to creating and sharing. The Circular / Sharing Economy impacts core business models and higher education (HE) must be ready to address the change by developing relevant competencies of graduates in order to secure innovation and growth. Not only is 3D printing the main technology for prototyping, it is also hyped as the technology to bring about the next industrial revolution. According to Verified Market Research, the Global 3D Printing Market was valued at USD 8.08 Billion in 2017 and is projected to reach USD 49.74 Billion by 2025, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 25.5% from 2018 to 2025. The comprehensive research has been done by project consortium analyzing around 100 university makerspaces, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Aalto University and other partners. The conclusions showed that similar structures are emerging rapidly but they lack clear recognition frameworks, access guidance, strategic integration of university makerspaces into study process, networking between universities, public and private makerspaces and businesses. Thus, the aim of the HEI MAKERS project was to increase innovation and creativity through partnership of HEIs and technical spaces, leading to trans-disciplinary approaches and new teaching methods in HE, availability of open resources for formal and non formal education, better entrepreneurial and creativity skills of graduates. The specific objectives sought by the project were fostering collaboration of HEIs, university and private makerspaces, and other businesses; amplifying technological entrepreneurship and technical creativity as key competences; promoting innovative education methods; increasing open resources based learning opportunities; recognising competencies gained through active learning at makerspace as per programmes developed; testing the above-mentioned collaboration concept and ensuring sustainability of results; identifying and attracting new players to join the next stages of the HEI MAKERS initiative. Project partners developed 5 intellectual outputs. Guidelines for HEIs, analyzing how practically collaborate with technical spaces to increase quality of higher education, revealed internal challenges and lack of collaboration among faculties within the same HE institution. Training modules on technological entrepreneurship and technical creativity in 3D printing and rapid prototyping were made available on Moodle for HEIs to improve curricula and for technical spaces – use as self learning / non formal education materials. Intensive study programme as HEI MAKERS international summer school was organized to facilitate the uptake of collaboration concept. As a result, “Makers academy” was launched by Vilnius Gediminas Technical University inviting students to gain rapid prototyping skills already in Spring 2020. The plugin for open code software "Blender" allowing more efficient 3D printing was made available online for the Blender community with approx. 8 million downloads annually. Partners organised 6 multiplier events involving 200+ representatives of the target group with highly positive feedback. The direct target group of the project was HEIs, their students, and technical spaces. HEIs were represented in the consortium through LT, LV and RO universities, covering 50+ thousand students. These are the countries with less advanced HE (as per QS World University Rankings) in Europe who need to employ modern teaching strategies in order to catch up with the leaders. Association of technical spaces (TEA, LT) and a private makerspace Ludor (RO) represented technical spaces and ensured their involvement in the project through a number of stakeholders. Indirect target group was business and business support organisations, which employ skilled students or host startups in acceleration or business incubation programmes, represented by Inventya (UK) and SSVSTP (LT). Project HEI MAKERS will continue encouraging more HEIs to initiate collaboration with makerspaces, re-think their study programmes to employ innovative training methods and address the challenges of XXI century labour market. Project's outputs opened up new learning opportunities through practical application of entrepreneurial and prototyping skills, which can further on involve and lead to the commercialisation of new services and products, to attracting potential investors, to creation of global start-ups and spin-offs and thus growing economy.