Communications

Design of Visual Images - Ben Hannam: Students edit an Illustrator file of a flattened cube. The assignment is to alter the file, so the laser cut and assembled cube is a specific size.

Communication Design - Ahmed Abdullah Al Fadaam: Students co-designed their ideal superhero. The hero is a female, has a bionic arm, mohawk, and can control your mind. Ahmed 3D printed the model and shared it with his class.

Multimedia Journalism - Kelly Furnas: Students assembled Google Cardboards and customized them to serve as an extension of a VR experience they created for a previous assignment.

Writing for Visual Media

Create a project and document the process

Design of Visual Images

Turn a digital design into a physical form

Multimedia Journalism

Assemble and customize a VR headset to continue the story

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Writing for Visual Media | CDE3180

Instructor: Ruth Eckles

Assignment Objectives

My class is called “Writing for Visual Media,” and so the hands-on activities at the Maker Hub seemed like a fun and unique way for the students to practice visual writing skills.

The way I set up the assignment was to pair up the students – one would execute the activity, and the other would document the activity through notetaking and photos. They would then produce blog and social media posts about their experiences.

Deliverable

The student pairs worked on a variety of tactile activities that the Maker Hub staff provided for us ranging from stickers to bookends to cardboard lamps to sewing projects.

The point of engaging in these activities was to practice their multimedia storytelling skills. They produced a blog and social media posts integrating photos, video clips, and text to tell the story of their experience at the Maker Hub.

: Student cutting cardboard to make the hanging light

: Students weeding their vinyl stickers

: Students holding the projects they made in class

Why the Hub?

I think it’s important for students to learn outside of the classroom. I think it’s great that Elon provides opportunities to partner with other departments to learn in unique ways.

With so much time on phones and computers, I think students also need more opportunities to have hands-on, tactile learning – as well as to interact with people other than their instructors. I saw my students come to life being able to use their hands and brains at the same time. They had fun – also an under-utilized (yet scientifically proven) part of learning.

Success? Encore?

I think it went great! I would definitely do it again and highly recommend other professors/classes collaborate with the Hub in a way that’s aligned with course objectives. My students absolutely loved their experience at the Hub.

Student quotes from their blog posts:

“Our group was able to bond through learning a new skill together and helping each member problem solve”
“I learned a lot about myself from this experience in the Maker Hub.”
“Activities like this at the Maker Hub are a great way to be creative, relieve stress, and try something new!”

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Design of Visual Images | CDE 358

Instructor: Ben Hannam

Assignment Objective

Learn about how collecting precedence and gathering research can help guide their decision-making process. It also gives students an opportunity to make models, test their ideas, and think about the viability of their concept. Students are given an Illustrator file of a flattened cube. The assignment is to alter the file so the assembled cube is a specific size. Students are also welcome to use the laser engraver later in the course when they are working on a package design.

: The class was trained on the laser class during one class session.

: A design the class made during the laser engraving training.

: Finished cube with a custom design.