Abstract:

3D design and printing (3DP) are crucial to all areas of human activities. Τhe lowering of the cost of 3D printers leads to their utilization in schools. According to a recent review paper, 3DP in education is used:
(a) to teach students about 3DP
(b) to teach educators about 3DP
(c) to teach design and creativity skills and methodologies;
(d) to produce artifacts that aid learning,
(e) to create assistive technologies, and
(f) to support outreach activities.

Even though there are some 3DP activities conducted in schools worldwide there are still a lot of barriers that hinder wider assimilation. Those barriers include the lack of teacher training, lack of appreciation of its beneficial influence in skill development, the absence of proper framework in formal education, and particularly in the Greek educational system where there is not much time devoted for hands-on activities.

Aiming to lower some of the above barriers we designed, and organized for three years a national student contest on 3D design and printing, named “ST3dM”, and so far 1200 teachers and students from all over Greece have been involved. A different theme is decided to be the focus each year. In the last year, students and teachers of primary, junior high, and high schools in teams were asked to design and print protective rings, mask extenders and face shields respectively, to prevent Covid-19 spread in schools and elsewhere. In addition, we used common steps of action research to design and offer an online asynchronous introductory course on 3D design and printing where 98 teachers and 240 students from 76 schools took part. The course consisted of 8 modules with the following activities: history of 3DP and prospects, introduction to 3D design and printing, main tools of digital design software, inserting-exporting and managing files, slicing software, 3DP procedure, tutorials on specific designs. During those years we updated the content of the course to meet the needs of teachers based on the experience of the previous year and students of K-12 and chose Tinkercad as the reference application.

This paper presents usability metrics (effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction) of 3D design and printing activities during the ST3dM contest, pinpoints good practices and remaining barriers.

Results of this 3 years research showed that teachers of all disciplines in primary and secondary education achieve remarkable grades of effectiveness and efficiency, independent of their age, discipline, or previous ICT knowledge. We also highlight teachers' perceptions regarding 21st-century skill development during 3DP activities in a formal education setting.

Keywords:

3D printing, 3D design, 21st-century skills, effectiveness, efficiency.