Credited Projects
As part of EPFL's official courses, these projects offers students the opportunity to create a prototype from scratch, crafting a functional prototype within a 14-week span within a teams composed usually of 2-5 students. By enrolling in these courses, students develop proficiency in rapid prototyping. This entails creating and testing a prototype quickly using the school's makerspaces.
Learning opportunities
Each EPFL course is different and will offer different learning opportunities.
However, most courses utilizing makerspaces tend to offer the following learning opportunities to the participants:
- Starting a project from a blank page and be proactive
- Rapid prototyping including multiple iterations
- Overseeing different manufacturing processes
- Learn the best practices in using some equipment
Each project benefits from the expertise of the group of coaches of the MAKE network.
The main objectives of this category of project is to open the doors to Professors willing to include open projects and prototyping in their class. An example of such a class can be found here.
Typical timeline
An EPFL course is always lasting 14 weeks, which is very short to end up with a functional prototype. The timeline here under is providing an idea of the different milestones student teams have to go through in these classes:
Roles and Responsibilities
The main responsabilities of these courses are shared between :
- The Professor, overseeing the class and evaluating students
- The course's teaching assistants, trained to meet your specific needs and in contact with the professor in charge
- The makerspace's teaching assistants, trained in the makerspaces with the technical coaches of the MAKE network. They will provide support for using of the space and its equipment
- The technical coaches, of the MAKE network supporting prototyping
Project examples
Here under you can find different examples of EPFL courses using the makerspaces:
