Making Makers

Preface

How are you going to design something if you’ve never built anything?^[1]

— William Guilford (University of Virginia Engineering professor)

In the fall of 2011, as I was taking a break from grading my students’ assignments, I found myself stopped by the preceding quote in an engineering education magazine. After six years of teaching undergraduate engineering design classes, I shared Dr. Guilford’s sentiment. In my classes, I found that the truly innovative designs most often came from students who were able to couple rigorous analysis (which is the focus of many engineering programs) with a practical knowledge of how machines work. The latter is knowledge that comes primarily from taking things apart, putting them together, and learning ...