SceneCraft for Educators
Online Professional Learning for Educators at the Friday Institute
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What if students could step inside a question instead of just answering one? Developed by the National Science Foundation-funded EngageAI Institute, SceneCraft is an AI-assisted storytelling platform that lets educators build interactive 3D narratives their students explore in a shared virtual environment. A student might walk through a museum while deciding how a city should spend limited resources, or interview community members after a hurricane to understand competing priorities. The story creates the experience; the learning happens through what students do before, during, and after it.
Our SceneCraft for Educators: Designing Narrative-Driven Learning Experiences self-paced online professional development course teaches you both halves of that work: how to create a SceneCraft story, and how to use it well in your instruction. You’ll follow the same process experienced SceneCraft educators use, starting from a learning goal, designing and refining a story, planning the surrounding lesson, and assessing what students take away. Throughout, you remain the instructional decision-maker. The AI drafts; you decide what stays, what changes, and what gets cut. Students don’t build the stories. You do.
Learn more about the EngageAI Institute.
| Course Available | Registration closed |
| Course Access Ends | 365 days after you register |
| Certificate Requirements Due | Within 365 days of your registration |
| Duration | 5 sections |
| Cost | Free |
| Primary Audience | K-12 Classroom Educators (Grades 3-12) |
| Certificate of Completion | Yes |
| Professional Development Hours | 3 |
Course Objectives
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Explain the purpose of SceneCraft and the Teacher-in-the-Loop model
- Create and publish a SceneCraft story
- Design a narrative that supports a clear learning goal
- Evaluate AI-generated content for instructional quality
- Plan meaningful “before, during, and after” learning experiences
- Design assessments aligned to student thinking and learning
Course Outline
The course is organized around the three phases of working with SceneCraft, plus foundational and implementation sections:
- Welcome to SceneCraft — Why narrative-driven learning works, what the platform does, and the Teacher-in-the-Loop model
- Foundations for Meaningful Story Design — The power of narrative, designing stories worth discussing, and planning before you build
- Phase One: Planning and Prompt Design — Setting up your account, choosing an instructional purpose, and writing your prompt
- Phase Two: Building Your Story — Drafting your story, reviewing the AI’s draft, and publishing
- Phase Three: Experiencing Your Story — Facilitating discussion, assessing beyond completion, and navigating the student environment
- Lessons — AI literacy lessons and exemplars you can adapt
- Checking School and District Policy Compliance — Reviewing local AI, data privacy, and digital tool policies before classroom use
- SceneCraft Resources — Quick Technical Guide, grade-band resource guides (3–5, 6–8, 9–12), the AI Literacy Activity Guide, FAQ, and data policy
Certificate/CEU Information
To earn a certificate for 3 professional development hours, which can be submitted to your local agency with a request for CEUs, you must:
- Complete all three phase sections and the two foundational sections
- Post in the discussion forum in each phase section
- Submit one SceneCraft story you have authored and published
- Complete the end-of-course knowledge check
Learning Experience
The course runs asynchronously through Moodle and combines concept videos, screen-recorded walkthroughs of the authoring tool, and downloadable resources. Each phase pairs short instructional content with a hands-on task, so by the end you’ve moved a story idea from a learning goal all the way to a published narrative and a lesson you’re ready to teach. You’ll have access to exemplar lessons, prompt-writing and story-review templates, grade-band guides, and the full SceneCraft resource library as you work.