3D printing as an educational tool for developing creative thinking: systematic review

This systematic review explored how 3D printing as an educational tool favors learning and develops creative thinking in higher education students, particularly in the industrial design career. Furthermore, this tool potentiates specific educational and cognitive abilities in students. Therefore, we performed a literature analysis covering the years 2017 to 2022 on how 3D printing has been integrated into the educational area and where the work in the classroom is headed. In this context, we followed the inclusion, exclusion, and relevance criteria to search for articles, resulting in the analysis of 19 documents found in the Google Scholar, SciELO, Redalyc and Scopus databases. We divided the analysis into five steps: planning, selection, extraction, results, and conclusions. The results show that most authors agree that the use of 3D printing helps to develop creativity and generate motivation in students. Therefore, it is necessary to promote an intelligent curriculum with scientific and technological innovations that reinforce the path toward their professional development.