Workshops

Wednesday | May 8, 2024 | 14:30 - 15:45

In the realm of STEM education, one of the significant challenges is the development of engaging courseware materials that include relevant exercises for both classroom instruction and homework assignments. Furthermore, a modern approach to STEM education necessitates real-time tracking of student progress to effectively gauge learning outcomes. The primary advantage of this real-time monitoring is the ability to swiftly and efficiently tailor the educational content based on the classroom's weaknesses.

Wednesday | May 8, 2024 | 14:30 - 15:45

The evolution of the science ecosystem in modern human life has intricately woven together elements such as teaching, learning, education, and research. This dynamic network encompasses students, professors, administrators, and researchers from both academia and industry. Despite shared overarching goals and numerous collaborative efforts, each country's unique learning systems react differently to global paradigm shifts like those triggered by ICTs, IoTs, the Internet revolution, and, more recently, the disruptive influence of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Wednesday | May 8, 2024 | 14:30 - 15:45

We are increasingly feeling the urgency of climate change and therefore the imperative to integrate sustainability into all areas of our lives. As educators, we need to ensure that engineering students are being trained to make sustainability an integral part of their projects [1].

This 2-phase workshop first engages participants in an activity (designed for engineering students) that develops  key sustainability competencies identified by UNESCO [2] including systems thinking, perspective taking and negotiation skills. Participants will reflect as teachers about how to apply the framework used in this experiential workshop to teach transversal skills in their own context.

Wednesday | May 8, 2024 | 14:30 - 15:45

Part A: A Computational Thinking (CT) - based Repository Platform with STEM Activities to boost Nanotechnology Literacy.

Computational Thinking (CT) is a fundamental 21st century skill, along with reading, writing and arithmetic literacy. This idea urge many Countries around the World, to reform their educational system and curricula, to integrate STEM based interdisciplinary activities, to support CT competencies. These activities need to be in line with the necessary skills which Industry 4.0 and beyond require. A State of the Art scientific and engineering field, which will dominate in the years to come, is based on Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). The area where MEMS are developed (dimensions in the Nano scale) is called Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology, is one of the fastest growing field, related to Industry 4.0 and may introduce skills deficits, as well as opportunities for new teaching practices in several subjects and educational frameworks. Based on the above, we prepared this workshop, which aims to investigate the teachers’ attitude towards integration of STEM based activities, focused on Nanotechnology related skills and applications. To do so, we show in a practical way, how teachers may interact with a proposed open hardware repository with training material, customized for CT activities for Nanotechnology and skills related to Industry 4.0 needs. With our proposed platform and contemporary didactic methodology, we pave the way to Nanotechnology related literacy, among students and their teachers. 

Wednesday | May 8, 2024 | 14:30 - 15:45

This workshop provides a preview of the "International Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education," slated for release by Routledge in late 2024. As the field of Engineering Ethics Education (EEE) continues to mature and attract a diverse cohort of researchers, the handbook constitutes an invaluable resource for those steeped in the domain as well as newcomers.

Wednesday | May 8, 2024 | 16:30 - 17:45

The rise of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form ChatGPT has the potential to completely transform the way education is delivered and consumed. On the other hand, Metaverse, using technologies that provide immersive experiences, is going to revolutionize the way we interact on the Internet. The unification of AI and Metaverse will disrupt many sectors including Education. AI-enabled Metaverse can potentially enhance student experience and learning exceeding the existing educational system capabilities. An immersive virtual space with enhanced collaborative features supported through AI-powered Avatars can produce personalized and tailored learning experiences for learners resulting in improved engagement and learning.

Wednesday | May 8, 2024 | 16:30 - 17:45

If you are new to the world of engineering education research (EER) you will probably have seen a variety of different methods in the literature of how to conduct experiments within the class, but may be struggling to identify which method would be most appropriate to study the innovation or phenomenon that you are specifically interested in. This workshop is for those interested in expanding their understand of engineering education research techniques beyond evaluations of their practice to undertake novel research enquiries of the sort that may be published in journals such as the IEEE Transactions on Education or IEEE Transactions on Learning Technology. We will discuss how to set research questions to ensure a robust study and what approaches may be appropriate to create a rigorous study that can be put forward to publication. It is expected that participants will share a research questions that they are looking to address and work in small groups to develop their ideas into research studies.

Wednesday | May 8, 2024 | 16:30 - 17:45

This workshop provides a high-level exposure to these teaching and learning methods through the lens of STEM outreach and our IEEE TryEngineering Lessons. Join us to see practical examples of strategies you can apply to your STEM outreach that would better engage students and help them learn what you are teaching on a deeper level.

Wednesday | May 8, 2024 | 16:30 - 17:45

This workshop is designed to formulate a community of practice by bringing engineering educators who aspire to improve their teaching by acknowledging and supporting the cultural knowledge students possess. At the conclusion of this workshop, participants will be able to: 1) Apply principles of critical self-reflection to their pedagogy, 2) Identify the tenets of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP), and 3) Locate socio-political considerations embedded in their course content and assessment procedures

Wednesday | May 8, 2024 | 16:30 - 17:45

Visible Light Communications (VLC) has recently attracted a great deal of attention due to its potential to use the light emitting diode (LED) based lighting infrastructure in order to provide license free high-speed data rate (DR) transmission. Its main advantages include the wide spectral availability and easy bandwidth reuse . In addition, due to the different frequency occupied by the visible and RF bands, there is no interference between VLC systems and radio frequency (RF) ones. Among the different potential uses of VLC, the most prominent one is Li-Fi, which refers to the use of VLC technology as the basis of local area networks as an alternative to Wi-Fi. It is worth noticing, that due to the the potential use of VLC in LANs, the IEEE 802.11 Working Group (WG), open the way for 802.11bb task group on Light Communications, in July 2018, which focuses on changes to the base 802.11 standard to enable light medium communication capability. The participants in the proposed workshop, will be involved in developing a prototype educational device, using LabVIEW programming, and understanding fundamental communication patterns of LiFi.

Thursday | May 9, 2024 | 16:15 - 17:45

This special session of the IEEE EDUCON conference will consist of presentations on the journal offerings of the IEEE Education Society (EdSoc).  The three presenters look to promote interest in the papers found within their journal since they have significant value to educators who wish to learn about the techniques used with and potential engagement in impactful engineering education. The publications discussed during this session do not cover the entire portfolio of the IEEE EdSoc but will instead focus on the EdSoc's journal offerings: namely, the IEEE Transactions on Education (ToE) and the IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies (TlT).  ToE accepts original scholarly contributions to innovative engineering education that include compelling evidence of its impact in the classroom.  This evidence must include a clear, relevant process by which the evidence is collected, analyzed, and interpreted.  TlT covers advances in innovative learning technology used in the classroom where examples of such technology are tools, tutoring, adaptive learning systems, and social learning techniques.  The expected approach by our presenters to journal coverage during the session follows.  Our VP of Publications, John Mitchell, will start with an overview of EdSoc's publications, their relationships to each other, and the value of choosing to submit works to and reading papers in our journals.  The target audience of our journals is those educators who wish to advance novel and impactful engineering education.  During the allotted time of the session, the two EiCs will address their respective journal's goal and aims, what their journal expects to see in a manuscript, how to improve an author's acceptance rate to the journal, and other common issues that these editors face. It is our intent for attendees of this special session to come away with a better understanding of what the IEEE EdSoc publications can do for their career goals. Topics of Interest:  We will not be seeking discussion contributions.  We will be presenting on the latest developments in the publication offerings of the IEEE Education Society.  The officer and editors associated with these journal publications will be the presenters. 

Friday | May 10, 2024 | 12:45 - 14:15

Whether you are new to engineering education research or an experienced researcher, knowing what prior work has been conducted in your topic of interest is essential. Literature reviews can not only inform your practice, but also help you identify gaps or new directions for further research. However, you may often feel that the information out there is too vast and complex to synthesize and summarize. 
More traditional narrative reviews are often biased by literature searched and the reviewer's selection. On the contrary, systematic literature reviews aim to reduce this bias by designing and following a comprehensive plan and detailed search process on a particular topic, such that it can be reproduced by anyone. 

Friday | May 10, 2024 | 14:45 - 16:15

The plan builds from and extends previous online delivery of the workshop via (1) REEN and the Engineering Education Research Network (EERN) Africa, (2) the Centre for Research on Engineering Education at the University of Cape Town, and upcoming (3) Research in Engineering Education Symposium (REES 2024) in Hubli, India. The workshop will focus on participant interaction and learning, and participants will be asked to bring wifi-enabled digital devices with them to permit online searching during focused periods of the workshop.