FOCUS

Robotics for Equality and Democracy is a STEM and educational robotics program deployed in Tunisia public schools as a partnership between a local IEEE SIGHT Tunisia Chapter and the academic inspection for primary education of Dar Chaabane II, Nabeul, Tunisia republic. This lecture will describe the program implementation’s main steps covering alignment with local educational system policies and regulations, the educator’s training, the organization of the learner’s activities and their assessments based on a project based methodology. The IEEE STEM portal and the Try-Engineering lesson plans were the main resources used to build the teaching/training materials. The program was initially developed as extracurricular clubs, before being adopted for curricula activities for technology education.

SPEAKER

Dr. Nizar Rokbani is an Assit Prof. University of Sousse, Tunisia and an IEEE Senior member. He has served in several volunteering positions in IEEE RAS and SMC Tunisia Chapters since 2009. He has organized the IEEE Robocomp robotics competition from 2010 to 2015. He is very active in promoting open hard electronics with a specific focus on robotics and related applications. He is very active in promoting STEM and early engineering activities. His research interests include applications of intelligent techniques such as Swarm intelligence, computational intelligence, fuzzy logic, evolutionary algorithms to robotic systems and industrial processes.

Dr. Rokbani received several IEEE awards including the Meritorious Achievement Award in Pre-University Education, IEEE Educational Activities Board 2019, IEEE, USA. “For significantly increasing the impact of the IEEE Teacher In-Service Program (TISP) in Tunisia through the Robotics for Democracy program”; The IEEE R8 Chapter of the year 2019 Award; and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, Chapter of the Year Award, 2017.

Presentation date: 17 May 2023