IIM goes ISAM 2022 – Participating at the International Symposium of Academic Makerspaces

The International Symposium of Academic Makerspaces (ISAM) is an annual conference focusing on innovation and makerspaces since 2016. Around 350 people from academia and industry expand their knowledge and exchange ideas at this event.

Academic makerspaces, those in higher education institutions, have an impact on the efficiency of student learning in fields such as science, engineering, math, music, entrepreneurship, medicine/biomedicine, architecture, mathematics, and literature. 

Makerspaces foster interdisciplinary interactions and deepen learning through experimentation. Through the ISAM community, the goal is to provide knowledge, to create student-maker-communities, inspire students to use these spaces, maintain a culture of safe, fun, and responsible use, measure/maximize educational and social impact, and select appropriate practices, programs, safety policies, training, personnel, and equipment.¹

This year, ISAM took place atGeorgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta from November 6-9, 2022. Prof. Dr. Ramsauer and Ass. Prof. Dr. Matthias Wolf are on the scientific committee of this year's conference and supported the organizers of Georgia Institute of Technology in selecting the poster contributions.

Andreas Kohlweiss presented his paper at the conference titled "Identifying Effects of Integrating Academic Makerspaces into Open Innovation Cooperations. A Research Framework.". With the question of how academic makerspaces can contribute to removing or reducing barriers in open innovation collaborations, the paper describes the methodological approach that should lead to answering the question. In addition, first interim results are presented.

Patrick Herstätter presented a poster titled “Extended reality to support product development in makerspaces". The poster delivers an overview of extended realities’ potential for usage in makerspaces to support relevant processes like product development. Further, it gives an overview of a possible setup and use cases on the example of the implementation – including already developed applications - within the Schumpeter Laboratory for Innovation at Graz University of Technology.

Marion Unegg presented a poster on the topic of "Awareness building regarding sustainability in a student-driven product development project", a workshop on sustainability in product development processes carried out in Makerspaces. The focus is primarily on imparting knowledge of the fundamentals of sustainability. For example, students are taught the Greenhouse Gas Protocol of the World Resource Institute.  With the learned theoretical knowledge in combination with practical exercises and case study, the students should be able to consider the GHG footprint in the product development process of their project.

¹  ISAM 2022, Why ISAM?, Online:  https://isam2022.hemi-makers.org/ , last checked on November 2nd 2022