What is Making and Manufacturing Today, and Why is Innovation Part of the Story?

Catalog description

As a Communication Intensive course, students will learn about making, manufacturing, and innovation through a historical lens by engaging with the content through various types of communication mechanisms: academic writing, public communication, making, and oral presentation. More specifically, the content centers around the rise of the creative class into the world of "making", and how it has resulted in new economic models, new definitions of manufacturing, and new ways of working. "Making" is inclusive of a wide variety of activities, from arts & crafts, to woodworking, to high technology integrating with traditional craftsmanship and individualized customization, to products with embedded sensors in traditional materials, to the use of 3D printing of everything from polymers to metals to chocolate. Within all of these approaches, "innovation" is often the buzzword, the common denominator. What does innovation mean in this context? Are innovators and makers today any different from the innovators and manufacturers of the past? What ethics are associated with the decisions related to new idea development and scale up? Through various communication modalities, the class will explore the commonalities between makers and manufacturers, and arrive at an understanding of innovation and apply this understanding to a project that could reach beyond the boundaries of CWRU. Counts as a Communication Intensive course. Prereq: Academic Inquiry Seminar (AIQS) or SAGES First Seminar.