Fab Academy

The Fab Academy provides instruction and supervises investigation of mechanisms, applications and implications of digital fabrication. The Fab Academy was launched by MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), to provide local access to advanced instruction for students in these labs exceeding the educational resources available to them. It links groups of students and instructors in Fablabs, with online video collaboration and lectures by a global faculty.

The Fab Academy offers a Diploma aimed at vocational and technical training for employment and investment (along with assistance to its graduates in those areas).

Fab Academy Certificates provide familiarity with technical options and capabilities, hands-on experience, and direction for further study. Each requires, and is evaluated by, developing and documenting projects. They are periodically renewed to reflect best practices. The Certificates typically require one week. They are combined in the Diploma, which requires about half a year, with progress evaluated by skills and projects rather than time or credits. The Fab Academy faculty is coordinated by CBA’s Director Prof. Neil Gershenfeld. Hands-on class work is guided by instructors in the labs with the skills to supervise and evaluate Certificates.

After five months, Diploma students show their projects by video conference. The information and techniques learned from previous classes/assignments were gathered in order to propose, analyse, develop, and fabricate a product/object with function, which embraced a variety of fields: arts, energy, textiles, toys, interaction, and more.

More information can be found at the project site fabacademy.org.