Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an all-embracing discipline covering a broad range of domains and applications and is expected to impact every field in the coming future. In India, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has included artificial intelligence in their K-12 curriculum, the goal being to build future AI professionals by providing countless new learning opportunities and pathways for professional growth to the students. The main challenge addressed by the schools is the capacity and capability of the teachers who teach the subject. The Pre-University Capacity Building Workshop on Artificial Intelligence was a new program from the IEEE Kerala Section that aimed to provide AI training for high-school teachers in the Kerala, India area (R10).
The program was a series of workshops uniting 90 teachers from different schools to instill confidence and spark enthusiasm in the science, engineering, and technology behind Artificial Intelligence. The event was conducted in three phases with the help of 10 event volunteers. Teachers who teach computer science for K-11 and K-12 were trained on various machine learning concepts. All the learning was through projects. The teachers who were trained would not only go on to teach these concepts to their students but also train other high school teachers on what they learned.
The program received positive feedback from the participants.
“I thank the IEEE STEM Program for arranging such a wonderful event for the teachers like us,” one teacher participant quoted. “We have never [received] such an intensive training in the subject machine learning and AI.”
Other feedback included that training on python notebooks was particularly helpful for teaching this discipline. The program creators plan to refine the program and continue with it in the future, providing regular training intervals on machine learning.
Pre-University Capacity Building Workshop on Artificial Intelligence was a recipient of the 2022 IEEE Pre-University STEM Grant Program.
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