Stratasys Introduces 3D printing curriculum for colleges and universities

Shelly Linor in her travels around the world together with Strarasys was lucky to deal with educators, professors and leaders and discuss with them the necessity of formal and informal 3D printing education. The demand for 3D printing experience and skills is growing all the time. And a lot more fields of industries in a couple of years are going to need them too. According to one of the latest researches carried out by Wanted Analytics, there has been an increase in demand for workers with 3D printing skills by 1,834% in the past 4 years. And when they compared the results of August 2014 to those of August 2013, there was an increase by 103%.

3D printing curriculum have come across two challenges. First, academic establishments are unwilling to share the programs with others. Another obstacle is 3D printing changes constantly and it needs to have all the possibilities for further development and refreshment so as to keep the students ahead.

That’s what has become impulse to creating a new Stratasys 3D printing curriculum for students. This full-semester 14-week course is going to help secondary and post-secondary students all over the world, whose careers are connected with 3D printing.

The new open course is being developed by educators from all over the world to guarantee its relevance and quality. Their aim is to make sure that all the students are ready to work in the new environment and have all the necessary skills and knowledge. Wentworth Institute of Technology in the U.S. and Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore have governed developing the Stratasys’ 3D printing curriculum.

Tutors can get the material free as well as the curriculum guide, STL files of 3D models, grading tools and supporting presentations. The content is mainly aimed at being constantly refreshed by practicing tutors.

The course for beginners Introduction to 3D Printing: From Design to Fabrication describes 3D printing applications, potential economic and social impacts, future trends and history. When learning the project students are going through experiencing the impact that 3D printing has on producing things and their design. A number of projects will take students through sketching and 3D printing a totally functional movable component in a single item. Students will get to know all the advantages of 3D printing considering precision, material capabilities and resolution. Stratasys advise using PolyJet and FDM 3D printing for the course. At the same time they can use any SLT support and software.

In future they are planning to supply additional courses dealing with multi-material use, 3D printing robotic applications and material memory.