Fab Lab Education in German Academia

This contribution describes the current state of the ongoing German federal research project ‘FAB101’ which explores Fab Labs and their role in German academia for three years by way of a real-world, action-oriented research infrastructure of four existing (Fab) Labs at universities. Currently, the results point to infrastructure, collaboration aspects and governance as well as educational concept issues as main factors influencing the more widespread adoption of personal digital fabrication and Fab Labs in German academia. This contribution details these results further and draws some first conclusions as well as recommendations. It also describes FAB101’s distributed research infrastructure and methodology and is intended to invite further comments, discussions and input for the project.