In the face of ever-growing advancements in information and manufacturing technology, the future of work will demand cross-disciplinary skills. In such a future, individuals will need to continually acquire a breadth of skills and knowledge that goes beyond any one discipline. At present, our education system follows a siloed model whereby students develop expertise within a given discipline but lack the contextual knowledge needed to integrate skills across different disciplines. In preparing students for the future of work, it is thus necessary that our pedagogical model provides opportunities for students to engage in and develop breadth or horizontal learning. 'Making through Micro-Manufacturing' (M3) is a production paradigm that couples the concerns of Making with production engineering, achieving the low-volume production (hence the term 'micro') of personalized artifacts. M3 can serve as a driver for STEM learning through it's framework for supporting horizontal learning experiences for students. In this NSF Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) funded work, we report on a class within a career and technology education (CTE) sequence that uses M3 as a structure to effectively engage high-school students with a low-volume production scenario focusing on a end-consumer product (instructional science kits for local elementary schools). The class charges a M3 student group with the manufacturing of instructional science kits for elementary schools, which integrates basic electronics and digital fabrication to produce the kits at scale. Through the class, we seek to understand how students develop personally-defined depth and breadth of skills across the Making and production aligned disciplines that form the foundation of the students' practices in the CTE class. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
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