Fostering Rural High School Students’ Creativity Through Making and Tinkering with 3D Printing

Creativity has been a key driver of innovation; thus, cultivating creative problem solvers is a central goal of STEM education. Making and tinkering practices supported by 3D printing offer a promising avenue for fostering creativity, particularly because the relatively low cost and accessibility of 3D printing make such opportunities feasible in rural educational settings. However, empirical evidence linking these practices to measurable gains in rural students’ creativity remains limited. To address this gap, this study investigated whether integrating making and tinkering experiences through 3D printing affected rural school students’ creativity. A convergent mixed method design was employed in which quantitative and qualitative data were collected in parallel, combining quantitative data from a single-group pretest–posttest design with qualitative insights from semi-structured interviews. After receiving institutional review board approval, parental consent and student assent, this study involved eleven students (ages 16–18) from a rural public high school in the southeastern United States, seven of whom participated in semi-structured interviews. The results indicated a significant increase in students’ creativity scores after participating in the 3D printing session, with a moderate effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.58). Qualitative findings revealed that the hands-on, iterative nature of the 3D printing process fostered students’ creative thinking, in particular, originality and usefulness. The makerspace program provided a tangible platform that allowed students to translate abstract ideas into physical products via rapid prototyping. These findings added preliminary evidence for the potential of integrating 3D printing into educational settings as a means of cultivating creativity, particularly among rural students.