Biofuel Training Workshops for Diverse Stakeholders Ranging from Pre‐College Students to Educators

Abstract

Core Ideas Biofuels workshops positively affected educators, pre‐college students, and graduate students. Multidisciplinary trainings were implemented to accommodate diverse knowledge levels while each groups’ needs were assessed to facilitate future adaptations. For continued teaching, all educators were provided biodiesel classroom teaching kits. Training materials are available online for continued accessibility to stakeholders. Over a period of 2 years (2014–2015), 23 educators, 62 precollege students, and 14 graduate students were engaged through three kinds of teaching workshops based on formal lectures, hands‐on activities and interactive demonstrations. All participants were given pre‐ and post‐training tests to assess changes in their opinion about alternative energy resources, their knowledge, and confidence in teaching others about biofuels. These evaluations revealed a significant increase in the post‐test scores compared to the pre‐test for all four groups in technical knowledge (df = 56; t = 9.12; p < 0.0001), economic considerations (df = 61; t = 4.42; p < 0.0001), as well as positive attitudes toward biofuel (df = 39; t = 2.68; p = 0.0054). When the gain in the technical knowledge was assessed, significant increases after the workshops were noted for educators (df = 10; t = 5.18; p = 0.0002), graduate students (df = 5; t = 2.76; p = 0.0199), high school youth (df = 19; t = 9.51; p < 0.0001), and middle school students (df = 19; t = 4.28; p = 0.0002). In addition, the educators as well as the college students registered a significant increase in their teaching confidence (df = 18; t = 2.29; p = 0.0172) after the workshop. Since teachers’ pedagogical approach and adoption of curriculum is dependent on the above issues, results presented in this study are adoptable by other educators for designing biofuel trainings at various levels after making their situation specific modifications.