International students design and share solutions in the Global Makeathon

320 students from James Dyson Foundation partner schools in Bath (UK) and Chicago (US) joined forces to solve engineering problems that they experience in their everyday lives.

The Global Makeathon is an international design engineering challenge for intuitive problem solvers and budding engineers. 320 students from James Dyson Foundation partner schools in Bath (UK) and Chicago (US) joined forces to solve engineering problems that they experience in their everyday lives.

Teams of students in the UK were partnered with teams of students in the US. Each team identified a problem that they found in their living or working environments. These problems included getting up on time in the morning, tangled headphone cables, and cold bus stops. The students then worked to design a product that would solve their partner international team’s problem. Solutions included: a smart wardrobe, ankle umbrellas and a ‘shopping pet’ robot.

The teams received feedback from their counterparts across the Atlantic throughout the project. Responding to this feedback allowed them to practice the iterative design process, the repetitive method of prototyping, testing, analysing and refining a design.

Students were enthusiastic about working with students from across the Atlantic and having a sense of autonomy over the work they were producing. The students were also inspired by solving real world problems. The outcome of the Global Makeathon was a substantial international collaboration project that celebrates the principles of design engineering in the classroom.