Click for Speaker Bio

Elizabeth Dailey

This session is designed for educators who want to engage beginner students in 3D creation. The session will discuss a microcourse model approach to 3D creation exposure education that helps new creators implement step-by-step, end-to-end, project-based 3D creation workflows broken into digestible chunks. Microcourse participants experience quick success, achieving visual results within minutes and completed projects within a few hours. Microcourses support participants in using increasingly accessible, no-code and low-code professional 3D creator tools. This approach allows participants without existing deep technical knowledge to build confidence to experiment with 3D creation and pursue further directions in computer graphics and related fields.

This model was developed by CreateAccess, a new nonprofit that produces freely available 3D creation microcourses. CreateAccess will share outcomes, lessons learned, and future directions following microcourses piloted in spring/summer 2023 with middle and high school students. Participants built unique, personally-relevant Fortnite Islands in the Unreal Editor for Fortnite by creating photogrammetry models of objects in their environments using their phones, and importing the models into UEFN for editing, animating, and more. The session will include demonstrations of participants’ work, insights about implementing and adapting microcourses, and resources for those who wish to facilitate microcourses with their students.

Attendee Benefits

This session will benefit educators of middle and high school students who want to engage students in 3D creation. The CreateAccess 3D creation microcourses that will be discussed during this session are freely-available, designed for beginner creators, and include enrichment activities for students who wish to pursue further directions. Session attendees will learn about opportunities to use CreateAccess’ microcourse materials to implement microcourses with their students, will receive sample microcourse lesson plans/facilitator resources, and will be invited to access CreateAccess’ full complement of materials and resources at createaccess.org. Attendees will learn about and discuss strategies for using and adapting microcourse materials in their classrooms or programs, informed by outcomes and lessons learned from past implementation efforts. The session will provide context for this work through a discussion of the increasing accessibility of and demand for 3D creation, and the potential for supporting socioeconomic mobility by creating