IEEE Student Branch at Kent helps organise first Teacher In-Service Program

An IEEE Region 8 Education Activity committee formed by Iulia Motoc (PhD Research Candidate from the School of Engineering and Digital Arts and IEEE Program Coordinator), Sohaib Qamer (Chair, IEEE Educational Activities), George Papadimitriou and Thanassis Andriopoulos (both Student Reps, Greece Section) organised the first Teacher In-Service Program (TISP) Week, which was held between 8 – 16 2016.

The event included particdipation from over 15 countries spanning Europe, Africa, and Middle East (IEEE Region 8) with over 600 teachers being trained. The workshops have received excellent feedback from the teachers, with some countries considering implementing the activities in their curriculum and requesting further training for teachers.

TISP is a professional development workshop aimed at helping teachers bring exciting hands-on engineering lessons into their classrooms, as well as to raise awareness about the current numbers of students choosing to pursue a STEM career. Once trained, IEEE volunteers can connect with pre-university schools in their local communities to deliver the hands-on program.

The goals of the program are to:

Empower section volunteers to collaborate with their local pre-university community;
Promote applied inquiry-based learning;
Enhance the level of technical literacy of pre-university educators;
Encourage pre-university students to pursue technical careers, including engineering;
Increase the general level of technical literacy of pre-university students throughout their educational careers.

Though TISP, IEEE volunteers help support engineering education and the development of future engineering students.

For more information about the event and to see all the participating sections, go to: tisp.ieeer8.org