About

SPACE365: Make Things That Matter is a complementary course at Dawson College, and is part of an integrated learning community in conjunction with SPACE (Sciences Participating with Arts and Culture in Education). It embraces the notion that all problems linked to contemporary issues, even the seemingly intractable ones, can be solved through ingenuity, cooperation and a shared desire to improve the lives of all.

The course explores problem solving, maker culture, innovation, and the future through the application of design thinking, social impact tool sets and related methodologies. Students generate, develop and realize their own breakthrough ideas by way of learning basic skills of brainstorming, research, prototyping, and public presentations. Collaborating in groups, they may pursue any problem that aligns with the annual SPACE theme, can be related to a contemporary issue and has the potential for a synthesis of disciplines.

Students are encouraged to draw inspiration and incorporate knowledge, skills and problems from their programs and any other learning activities or extra-curriculars they may be already involved in. A strong emphasis on cross-disciplinary exploration provides guided opportunities for integration of the arts and sciences where students, working in a group or individually, are given freedom to choose a suitable format for their major term project.

The following short film provides a glimpse of students working on problems that matter to them, navigating the challenges that a relationship to the SPACE theme of en-tropy poses and reflecting on the processes by which they will arrive at their proposed solutions. Final projects, in progress at the time of filming, were presented in multiple venues and linked with other SPACE activities and projects such as those undertaken by the SPACEcorp R&D group referenced in the film.