Developing engineering-oriented educational workshops within a student branch

The development of two educational workshops, one on energy efficiency and one on human-machine interfaces, is detailed and discussed. Attraction to engineering is not created as much as lost at early ages through current education methods. Through positive, hands-on experiences with engineering in K-12 education, this trend can be turned. IEEE student branches have as part of their mission the education and creation of quality educational resources for the public. After searching in vain for suitable inexpensive material, the IEEE student branch Leuven decided to design and create two workshops on engineering topics for an audience of 10-12 year olds. Handling this as a repeatable project, the student branch found partners to create a low budget project for the attendees. Using the skillset of the specific partners and organizers optimally on the subtasks, a successful repeatable cooperation is realized. This paper discusses the environment in which the project is realized, the steps to it, and how it (indirectly) benefits the organizing student branch.