Processes

Student application process and assessment

Fab Academy is open to potential students both coming from technical and non-technical backgrounds. But there is one key aspect that will help in making everyone’s experience successful: the time commitment.

Screening students

Instructors need to interview their prospective students; its their responsibility to ensure that incoming students understand the course’s dedication, participation and documentation requirements, as well as the grading benchmarks used for evaluation.

If your applicants have a Low or Medium proficiency in 2D and 3D modeling, Digital fabrication, Electronics programming and Web design and development, the course should be considered a full-time dedication program. It is your responsibility to make sure your students understand the implications of the time commitment needed in each case to succeed in the completion of the program.

Arrange a personal or online conference with your potential students, and make sure to inquire about:

  • Their proficiency in the English language: to understand the lectures and to document properly it’s key that you are aware of this from day one. Although the content is recorded and has several languages subtitles, the documentation your student has to produce will be in English.
  • Their dedication: Do they work part or full-time? What are their family obligations? What time availability does your Fab Lab offer?
  • Their background in technical skills to assess which assignments will require extra support and the amount of time dedicated to the program.
  • Be sure you discuss with them the schedule of the program and how the classes and evaluation (local + global) processes work

All these elements will help you draw the profile of your students and it is an opportunity to tell them what the Program is about.

How does the Application Process work?

Once the Fab Lab is accepted and confirmed as an active Node, the Instructors must follow the student's application process:

Prospective students apply to the online form and select the Node over the list of active and accepted Fab Labs (nodes).

Central Coordination receives a notification of the application and re-sends the email that contains the student’s profile, to the Node selected by the Applicant. Once they receive one or more applications, Nodes/Instructors must:

1) Contact the applicant as soon as possible to give them details about the lab and the implications of taking a course such as Fab Academy. 2) Highly Recommendable: to have an interview with all applicants before they join the course, this way nodes understand their background and their expectations. Nodes are responsible to keep their students informed about procedures. 3) Nodes must inform Coordination if the applicant is accepted or not. Application - Acceptance - Deposit cycles are 1 month long, so feedback must be continuous.

Once Nodes accepts/declines applications, Coordination will send acceptance (or rejection) letters with payment instructions to all applicants.

Acceptance letters will be sent from Coordination ideally in 2-week cycles.

Node Preparations & Supply Chain

Supplies

Ordering for the Fab Academy program should ideally be made in it’s entirety ahead of the start of the course.

Note

Fab Academy Inventory HERE

This is an ideal scenario which due to cashflow issues is not always possible. It is then of the utmost importance to keep track of upcoming assignments and have items in stock and on-premises at least 4 weeks in advance from when they will be needed, thus minimizing the impact of possible shipping delays. Many of the items we use are sometimes hard to find and this advanced purchasing timeframe is essential to ensure students are able to complete assignments on time.

Announcements regarding changes in inventory or new items are sometimes made during the weekly prep meetings. You should account for new items being ordered during the course in your budget.

Checklist for the First Class

Please check the following before the first day of class:

  • Your lab has all the digital fabrication machines set up and ready for immediate student use.

  • You have ordered (or are working on ordering) all the necessary course materials

  • Your lab meets the video conferencing (Zoom) requirements, and your lab has tested its functioning to ensure that:

  • your network can handle the bandwidth required
  • you have the necessary hardware

  • understand how to un-mute your microphone

  • Your lab’s Instructor is registered, added to the Gitlab Project and, later on, to the Evaluation App. If you have not been receiving Gitlab notifications, or you are unable to access the Evaluation App contact Fab Academy Coordination.

  • Once you’re on GitLab, set the Notifications to “Watch” mode, so you receive the notifications.

  • You have clearly communicated your student’s list to Fab Academy Coordination so your students have been added to the Class environment.

  • You have a weekly schedule with your students for local tutorials, machine access, problem-solving, homework review, etc.

  • You have clearly communicated to your students the Schedule, and the specific rules of engagement of your lab / organization. You should consider asking them to sign a set of Terms & Conditions with the basics of the course and la Lab functioning.

Video Conferencing

Prep Meetings, Classes, and Recitations will be held in the video conferencing platform Zoom.

Zoom supports meeting recording, text chat, content sharing, and multiple participants. It connects to multiple and enables users to connect to meetings from various devices including Android, IOS devices and web-based.

The specific Zoom address for classes will be shared with the Nodes when the course starts.

Simultaneous videoconferencing among many remote users is essential for Fab Academy. This system allows people to talk directly to all the other participants, including Professor Neil Gershenfeld, and ask questions during our Wednesday lecture sessions.

Necessary Hardware / Connectivity:

  • Internet access with enough bandwidth
  • Webcam (or one built into your computer)
  • Echo-canceling USB speakerphone

Video Conferencing Etiquette - IMPORTANT!

Because everyone connected can hear each other, it is vital that you are muted when joining a conference. By default, you'll be muted in the platform and so remember to UN-MUTE ONLY WHEN SPEAKING.

Failure to mute will cause a disruptive feedback echo that will SERIOUSLY interfere with the audio quality, making class unpleasant. Neil can see who is the source of the problem and will mute you, so failure to mute is potentially embarrassing. Practice connecting prior to class.

Similarly, make sure that your camera is on and that all class participants are visible (if possible). Light the participants from the camera side and eliminate back lighting as much as possible, so everyone connected can see you.

Internal Communications

Every Fab Academy cycle is organized in our Fabcloud and named after the year. This helps us collect all projects in a single place, host the Fab Academy and Fab Lab Network's websites and provide a tool for collaboration and communication between people and labs. We use Gitlab to work collaboratively and to organize all the content related to Fab Academy in a distributed way.

What do we do with Gitlab?

Keep all student files under version control; track groups of students, labs, instructors and staff; publish the Fab Academy website; publish and host lab and student pages; publish documents; track what needs to be done and communicate using Issue trackers; take meeting notes using Markdown; and build sites and documentation using static site generators.

So every Fab Academy cycle Instructors are added as to the following Gitlab Groups & Repos:

Instructors Group: https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/academany/fabacademy/2023/instructors

Staff Group: https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/academany/fabacademy/2023/staff This is the main channel for internal communication, it doesnt include students

Class Group: https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/academany/fabacademy/2023/class This is the channel global communication, it includes students

Lab Repository: https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/academany/fabacademy/2023/labs/NODENAME This is the repository where your student’s sites are nested.

Students will be added as to the following Gitlab Groups & Repos:

Class Group: https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/academany/fabacademy/2023/class

Students Group: https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/academany/fabacademy/2023/students

Their Node’s repo: https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/academany/fabacademy/2022/labs/NODENAME/students Where students can both Document and Publish their work, and Communicate with the rest of the group. This communication happens through Issue Trackers.

What is an Issue Tracker?

The GitLab Issue Tracker is an advanced and complete tool for tracking the evolution of a new idea or the process of solving a problem. Gitlab Docs(opens new window)

It allows communications between the different groups (students, Instructors, Faculty, Global Evaluators) within the Fab Academy structure easier and more organized.

Users will be able to:

  • Communicate with the class / Replacing emails
  • Track your personal tasks (in your projects)
  • Use them as Kanban boards
  • Assign issues to milestones

Communication's Etiquette

When using the Class Project, every member of the class (students, Instructors, Faculty, Global Evaluators) will receive an email notification each time somebody submits or comments an Issue. For this reason, please be cautious in the way you use this tool:

Users should first discuss their questions with their Local Instructor or Remote Guru if possible, before posting an Issue

Users should first check if the question/problem/comment was raised before in the Issues List

Close issues when the question/problem/comment is answered/solved/received

Mattermost

Mattermost is an integrated platform for messaging, collaborative workflows and project management. It is the platform we uste for real time conversations, that don’t need to keep record (like issue trackers).

https://chat.academany.org

Every year we create a Class group with all participants to join the Mattermost, in the different channels: General (Students, Instructors, & staff), Staff & Instructors, etc.

Classes & Support

Fab Academy yearly Calendar

APPLICATIONS & REGISTRATION September 1º to Late-December

  • Fab Labs Apply to become a Node
  • Prospective students apply to take the course

PREPARATIONS First weeks of January

  • Instructors Bootcamp
  • Students on-line Bootcamp (not mandatory)

CLASSES Late-January to June

  • Instructors attend Prep Meetings and follow deltas
  • Students attend Class: Global Review + Global Lecture
  • Students Attend local tutorials
  • Students develop & document their assignments
  • Instructors and Mentors do continuous reviews and evaluate periodically

PRESENTATIONS AND EVALUATIONS June -July

  • Students present their Final Project publicly in front of the Faculty and their peers
  • Instructors close their students local Evaluation
  • Global Evaluators double check student’s work and graduate or request next cycle for those not ready.

GRADUATION Last week of July or 1º week of August

  • Students attend the Annual Fab Lab Conference to receive their diplomas

CONTINUOUS EVALUATION September to December 1º

  • Upon availability of their Instructors and/or Global Evaluators, students can complete their work passed the July cutoff and submit their work to final review within the current cycle.

Prep Meetings

Short for Preparation Meetins, These are key meetings in which are discussed key aspects from the program, from organizational to content related details.

Instructors and Mentors (local or remote) are required to attend to all of the weekly prep meetings on Wednesdays 8:30 AM EST, 30 minutes before the start of class. If an Instructor is not able to attend, there must be somebody else representing the Node.

Prep meetings are mandatory

Global Class

Global Class happen on Wednesdays at 9:00 AM EST, and last for approximately 3 hours.

During the Global Class, professor Neil Gershenfeld uses this time for:

  • Global Review: he reviews the work of the students’ and their progress so far. Students must introduce themselves and talk about their progress and Final Project plans. This process is done via “randomizer”, wich means that the system randomly selects a student form the list.
  • Global Lecture: he presents and explains the content for that week’s assignment.

In addition to the classes, there are weekly Recitations held every other Monday, 9:00 AM EST, during the class period. These are content driven lectures related or not to the weekly assignments.

Regional Reviews & Global Open time

Regional Reviews are clusters of Nodes meetings, generally arranged by time-zone and language, spontaneous and optional but highly recommended. These are a great opportunity for students to do reviews with a bit more time and collaborate more directly with other students from other labs.

Regional reviews are organized every year, we post the dates at the beginning of the cycle.

Global Open time is a large meeting, open to all participants happening on Saturdays.

Local Instruction

Instructors generally run local classes to unpack the global classes and offer examples or do troubleshooting.

Local Nodes must ensure: * Instruction and technical guidance to all students * Students support off hours * Instructor support (local or remote) * Archive management (setting and fixing student's sites on GitLab)

Assessment & Evaluation

Note

The Assessment Document is the one and only standard for evaluation. It’s updated every year, by Prof. Gershenfeld and the Assessment team.

The evaluation of the student falls under the responsibility of the Instructors, not the Global Evaluators.

Local Evaluation:

Weekly

Instructors should be evaluating student’s work periodically throughout the course. A bi-weekly review is good, a weekly review with the student is ideal.

Instructors must review each student’s work according to the documentation provided by the student, NOT what was observed in the lab. Instructors should discuss incomplete work / documentation with a student on an ongoing basis. There should be no surprises at the end of the course.

The place to record the evaluation process is the Nueval App

Midterms

At the middle of the class period Instructors do a review of the general progress of students, a kind of "snap-shot" of their situation and a strategy to spot flag cases ealy on in the cycle.

Instructors can record the status of the student in “Midterm” unit on the Nueval App, in the same way they would do with the rest of the assignments.

Final Presentations

Students must present their Final Project to Prof. Gershenfeld and all their peers in the Final Presentations of early-June. Instructor’s job is to help them finish and wrap-up their projects, and guide them in the basic protocols of the Final Presentation: How to present in a very short time slot, how to upload their slides and videos for the presentation day, support them during the day.

Final

At the end of the class period, June-July, Instructors will have to spend extra time in reviewing the whole corpus of documentation of their students to make sure the work is:

Complete: all assignments are done and documented according to the year’s Assessment document (published on the course’s website every year), and no files are missing.

Compliant: all the documentation follows the standards of the Assessment Document

Instructors are strongly encouraged to use the Nueval App from day one.

Global Evaluation:

As we mentioned before, the role of evaluation falls completely in the hands of the Instructors. But, as a way to ensure that the global standards are met, the process of evaluating students has a second layer: the Global Evaluation. The Global Evaluation Committee, lead by senior Instructors, will run a soft review of the students documentation to ensure the work is complete and fits the standards of the Fab Academy Program. It’s more an audit than the actual evaluation.

Global evaluators will only review an assignment after that assignment has been evaluated by the Instructor and marked at 100% in the Nueval App.

A Global Evaluator can be early assigned to a student, only after 2 or more Assignments are marked 100% un the Nyeval App. Instructors can “Request a Global Evaluator” by simply cliking a button un the App.

At the end of the course, and after local instructors assessment is complete and marked 100%, The Global Evaluator can decide if the students is ready to graduate or needs more time.

Final Evaluation has 2 cutoffs: * Late July (at the end of the classes)
* Late November

The specific dates are published every cycle.