Printable creativity in plastic valley UC3M

In this paper we present an Open Source Community Oriented Project Based Learning (CO-PBL) educational model for engineering studies. We explain the pedagogical basis of our proposal and present a training course in which the model has been implemented. The chosen project has consisted of the design, building, and programming of a printable mobile robot (PrintBot). To print the robot´s parts we used open source 3D printers, creating a community of students (Plastic Valley) interacting with other designers spread all over the world. As it is shown in this paper, this initiative has proven to be highly motivating to the students and it enabled an explosion of creativity.