Transforming Student Futures One Teacher at a Time

Students of the 21st century face a future that is changing rapidly and growing more complex and ambiguous. To meet it with skill, they need critical and creative abilities: to frame the right problem, to experiment toward new solutions, to remain intelligently resilient through setbacks, and to stay actively curious about where their creativity could have an unexpected impact.
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Emergent Futures Lab's 3D Printing and Design Academy trains K-12 teachers to build those skills by running their classrooms as design studios.
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Since 2019, 698 educators have trained with us, reaching 80,968 students at a cost of approximately $5 per student. This school year, a new cohort of 308 educators is bringing our approach into their classrooms, and their feedback and reporting is helping the program continuously evolve and improve.

Calculate the Impact of Your Investment

Your investment

$50,000

10,000students for a school year

86teachers trained and supported

4impact reports to your board

Estimate at $5 per student and 116 students per teacher.

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Launch local to national cohorts, customizable scope, fully turnkey in two weeks

Schedule a Discovery Call

The Teacher Acts as a Facilitator: The Classroom Becomes a Design Studio

In the 20th century, expertise and making were spread across a vast set of siloed practices. Teaching mirrored that division. Today, STEAM learning, making, and skill-building can transformatively come together in one nimble, in-house design process: students design, print, test, redesign, and print again. This approach powerfully reshapes teaching and learning for a world that no longer sorts its problems into silos.

Generic software training ships with every 3D printer and STEAM kit. However, a box cannot ship a 21st-century teaching practice, which is what our 3D Printing and Design Academy builds.

Participating educators report that their teaching practices have transformed, and their students' work shows it.

Sheila Holland

Franklin Middle School, Hamilton Street Campus (7th and 8th grade, Technology)

"The 3D Printing and Design Academy transformed the classroom by shifting the instructional focus from traditional tutorials to playful, open-ended exploration. Instead of standard mini-lessons, the curriculum now centers on engaging, creative prompts, such as designing shoes, building a frog wall, or animating a cartwheel, which require students to apply core design skills like alignment, movement, and rotation."

Lisa McTague

Indian Hill Elementary School (4th to 6th grade)

"This year, my classroom has transformed from a space of traditional instruction into a high-energy R&D lab... I've shifted my teaching from "sage on the stage" to a facilitator of genuine innovation. My students no longer view Tinkercad and Fusion as mere software tools; they see them as gateways to solving real-world problems."

The First Print Is Never the Last

Teachers in our program replace front-loaded abstract information and step-by-step projects with experiential learning and open prompts that encourage students to respond with critical thinking and creative iterating. Students print, use, see what failed, (and more importantly, notice what surprised them) and redesign, most without being told to.
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Teachers did not expect this, and their quarterly reflections show the positive surprise.

Corine Czepiel

Franklin Township High School (9th to 12th grade)

"I anticipated that they might treat their first print as their final product, but instead many students naturally moved into cycles of testing, failure, and redesign once they saw the results of their prints in real time."

Why 3D Printing STEAM Kits Leave Students Unable to Design

Contrast this with the widespread STEAM approach, inherited from the 20th century, of following a universal project template, which concludes with a class printing a group of identical objects.

For example, one teacher told us that, before our program, she inherited a year-long curriculum built around a cuckoo clock: each week, students learned step-by-step how to 3D print one part and snap it into place. By June, every student held a handsome clock, but none could respond to an open prompt, engage critically and creatively with a different circumstance, or follow their curiosities with agency and autonomy.

They followed instructions and delivered the required result. But they never made a decision. They never explored what the design tools could do. The production-line approach strips out the exact moments where deep STEAM understanding forms: framing the right problem, asking why it matters, designing and building through experiment, and deciding what to change when the work fails or surprises them.

A program's project list can look like evidence of learning. However, on closer inspection, it documents twenty students repeating the same steps.

From a One-Day Workshop to a Year-Long Program

Emergent Futures Lab's 3D Printing and Design Academy began in 2019 as a one-day, eight-hour, in-person workshop for twenty teachers at Montclair State University and grew to eleven eight-hour workshop days. The in-person workshops trained teachers well, but once they returned to their districts and the school year started, they no longer had the support or reference materials they needed, and we lost the ability to measure classroom impact.

In response to the successes and limits of the in-person program, in 2025, we rebuilt the program from the ground up as a year-long online learning and support community with measurement built in. The year-round community keeps teachers connected, engaged, learning, and supported, and it gives us a direct channel to track and measure classroom impact. The 2025-26 cohort had 136 educators. In 2026--27, the cohort more than doubled to 310 educators, who are now bringing the approach into their classrooms.

90% Implementation, Documented Every Quarter

Each quarter, enrolled educators complete a classroom impact reflection. On average, 90% of responding educators report actively using the program in their classrooms. Each reflection takes about 15 minutes. It records what was taught and in which subjects, what students made, and how teaching approaches and student learning changed. Photographs, screenshots, and videos support every reflection for funder reporting. And each response feeds back into the program's evolution.

One Teacher, 116 Students, $5 a Student

When the online cohort launched, we surveyed participating K-12 teachers. On average, each teacher expected to reach 116 students in the school year. Application data adds a second measure: each trained teacher influences roughly two colleagues in their building. Many teachers also embed digital design into grade-level curriculum year after year, so the reach and impact continue with each new class.

Since the program began in 2019:
• 698 educators enrolled
• 116 students per teacher (2025 survey average)
• 80,968 students reached
• $5 average cost per student

As these figures exclude peer influence and curriculum that carries into later years, they very likely understate the program's reach.

1 teacher

116 students a year

+ about 2 colleagues influenced, not counted

+ next year's classes, not counted

A Year-Round Learning and Support Ecosystem

An in-person workshop’s learning, community, and support end when the in-person sessions conclude. From this point forward, they are on their own.

In contrast, the Academy's online community runs for the full school year. Teachers commit about 10 hours on their own schedule to complete the core learning modules. In return, they receive a robust online curriculum, timely expert help, access to a library of lesson plans, and a professional credential. Each week, we post new design challenges, and teachers share insights, designs, hacks, and student successes.

But this is only the beginning: as part of an online community of peers and our team, they get expert help when a print fails or a lesson stalls, plus a cohort of peers working through the same challenges all year long.

Where before there was a solitary teacher, now a community builds as skills grow, and students benefit directly. When one teacher asks how to rescue a failed print or adapt a lesson for a younger grade, every teacher in the cohort sees the question and can respond and/or learn. Additionally, we respond to all questions – as well as actively posting tips, news, and design challenges. Now one teacher's problem becomes the whole cohort's knowledge; best practices rapidly diffuse and evolve in real time across a robust, ever-expanding network of 21st-century-ready teachers and students.

A workshop (how we ran it before 2025)

A sponsored Academy cohort (2025 on)

Format

WorkshopOne to eleven days, in person, on a campus

Academy cohortA full school year, online, at the teacher's own pace

Time from the teacher

WorkshopThe workshop days, in one block

Academy cohortAbout 10 hours across the year, and quarterly reflections of about 15 minutes each. Plus as much engagement as they wish over the year.

Curriculum

WorkshopWorkshop materials

Academy cohortTwo certificate tracks (Tinkercad for K-7, Fusion 360 for grades 7-12), 28 standards-aligned lesson plans (13 for K-6, 15 for grades 7-12), weekly design challenges

Credential

WorkshopWorkshop attendance

Academy cohortA professional certificate per track, 8 PD hours each, up to 16 total

After the training

WorkshopThe teacher returns to school; contact ends

Academy cohortExpert support, weekly challenges that keep skills sharp, and a cohort community for the whole year

What we can measure

WorkshopNothing after the workshop ended

Academy cohortQuarterly classroom reflections: what was taught, what students made, visual evidence collected

What you receive

WorkshopA roster

Academy cohortThree quarterly impact reports and an annual narrative report, in the data fields your board tracks

Reach

WorkshopThe teachers in the room

Academy cohortThe teachers, an expected 116 students each per year, and the colleagues they go on to mentor

Start a Funder Conversation

Launch local to national cohorts, customizable scope, fully turnkey in two weeks

Schedule a Discovery Call

Who Is Emergent Futures Lab?

Iain Kerr and Jason Frasca co-founded Emergent Futures Lab in 2019 to change how creativity and innovation were taught. They are Associate Teaching Professors at Montclair State University and co-direct the MIX Lab, Montclair State University's award-winning 3D printing and digital fabrication research lab.

The Team: Iain hosts the certificate modules and is the pedagogical anchor. Jason runs the technical backbone: the machines and hardware, the design software, and the networked workflows in maker-spaces and classrooms. Andrew Harrison is the K-12 STEAM specialist and educator-experience lead. The three bring more than five decades of combined experience.

Quarterly Reporting – What Your Board Would Receive...

Every sponsor receives three quarterly impact reports and an annual narrative report: teacher reflections in their own words, photographs and video of student work, district and school counts, and the metrics your board tracks.

Get a sample year-end report from a recent cohort to sense what is possible.

Get the Impact Report

3D Printing and Design Academy

Transforming Student Futures One Teacher at a Time

Start a Funder Conversation

The Teacher Acts as a Facilitator: The Classroom Becomes a Design Studio

Sheila Holland

Franklin Middle School, Hamilton Street Campus (7th and 8th grade, Technology)

Lisa McTague

Indian Hill Elementary School (4th to 6th grade)

The First Print Is Never the Last

Corine Czepiel

Franklin Township High School (9th to 12th grade)

Why 3D Printing STEAM Kits Leave Students Unable to Design

From a One-Day Workshop to a Year-Long Program

90% Implementation, Documented Every Quarter

One Teacher, 116 Students, $5 a Student

A Year-Round Learning and Support Ecosystem

Start a Funder Conversation

Who Is Emergent Futures Lab?

Quarterly Reporting – What Your Board Would Receive...

KEEP DIFFERENCE ALIVE