Introducing Secondary School Students to Telecommunications Engineering Through the WiFinder Project: Part II –Training Workshop

Secondary school is an important period for students to consider numerous career options. Students can obtain exposure to a variety of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) professions by learning about engineering ideas. This exposure will allow them to make more informed decisions about their future academic and professional endeavors. Introducing engineering principles to secondary school students is therefore critical. Recent literature highlights that numerous STEM activities related to engineering have centered around robotics, the Internet of Things, or drones. The WiFinder project was initiated to introduce an activity in telecommunications engineering as an alternative. This work reports the promotion of Telecommunications Engineering concepts to secondary schools in various parts of Thailand. The key part was accomplished through the WiFi signal sources locating tool along with the activities design. These activities allowed students to develop a broad theoretical understanding of telecommunications engineering. Primary topics included radio transmitters and receivers, antenna theory, transmission lines, and wave propagation. This workshop was designed to transfer and boost that knowledge to teachers/educators, and student leaders. Since the outset, 1,147 educational institutions have applied to participate in this training session. Among those, 243 institutions participated in the training workshop. A total of 502 handheld kits were distributed during the training. Pre- and post-training assessments of teachers/educators and students showed an average improvement of 34.04%. The participants indicated positive feedback during the workshop, especially the hands-on activities. The future lesson adoption or integration into the curriculum may depend on schools’ acceptance and preferred pedagogical approaches.