American economic and social theorists have predicted that Additive Manufacturing (AM) heralds the beginning of the Third Industrial Revolution, succeeding the production line assembly that has dominated manufacturing since the late 19th century. AM, also known as 3D printing, refers to a process used to create a three-dimensional artifact by printing successive layers of material under computer control. The significant drop in price of 3D printers over the last decade has made them relatively common in undergraduate engineering labs, thereby opening up the opportunity to provide students with extended first-hand experience of AM. The goal of the project is to help K-12 students and engineering undergraduates learn about AM so that they are better prepared for the renaissance in U.S. manufacturing. Student learning will be supported by the labs, projects, course materials, and a textbook on AM that will be developed during this project. The institutions involved are Texas Tech University (TTU), a university with high research activity (RU/H), California State University, Northridge, a non-PhD-granting institution that is both an HSI (Hispanic Serving Institution) and an AANAPISI (Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution), and Kansas State University (KSU), both an EPSCoR and an RU/H institution.
Through creation of the AM course, the following goals will be met: (1) the development of intellectually rigorous course materials (e.g., textbook, lab manual, lecture notes) that will be publicly accessible via hard copy and a virtual classroom website; (2) the conduct of important educational research on the impact of the new AM curricula on changes in student attitudes and self-efficacy in STEM, the results of which will be published in engineering and education journals; (3) the development of simplified 3D printing projects for K-12 students and Maker Space users. Outreach by engineering undergraduates to K-12 students through one-on-one mentoring relationships will help to build the K-12 STEM pipeline by creating excitement and interest in engineering as a career.
