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Over the past few years, education at all levels has been greatly disrupted by the COVID pandemic. For many schools, face-to-face interactions were reduced or restricted to only those activities that have been determined to be essential for student instruction. The pandemic has also had a great impact on teacher professional development programming, which traditionally has been delivered largely in face-to-face settings. This paper examines the implementation of a series of energy technology teacher professional development workshops that were delivered virtually using online meeting apps. The results of the workshops are presented including participant measures of learning gains, and feedback describing how faculty participants used the information gained to modify their curriculum and instruction. The discussion includes observations and recommended practices to promote the effective incorporation of tools and equipment for remotely delivered workshops. 

Providing robust professional development opportunities for educators can present unique challenges, especially when activities occur abroad. In 2019, the NSF-ATE CREATE Energy Education Center took a group of renewable energy educators to Germany to study innovations in renewable energy and energy storage and to learn how these emerging technologies are incorporated into educational programming and workforce preparation. Learning activities conducted before, during and after travel ensured participant preparedness, academic rigor, constructive reflection and collaborative knowledge-building. This paper presents an analysis of accumulated participant data and presents recommendations for enhancing faculty learning when conducting international educator professional development programs. 

The German Energiewende is the planned transition by Germany to a low carbon, environmentally sound, reliable, and affordable energy supply. This paper reports on a U.S. faculty international study program, which took place in May 2019, to explore the intersection of the German renewable energy and energy storage sectors. The international program included eleven instructional faculty from throughout the United States on a two-week learning and discovery experience starting in Frankfurt and ending in Munich, Germany. This paper provides an overview of the German renewable energy and energy storage landscape in comparison to the United States. Emphasis is placed on differences related to the historical context, policy and regulatory differences, and technology advances in the renewable energy and energy storage sectors. The comparison of Germany and the U.S. provides a nice example for faculty and students to investigate how technology readiness, regulatory policies, and economic forces all intersect to establish markets for a multinational industry. Findings from the international program and their impact on the education practices of faculty in the United States are provided, with a focus on academic curriculum, teaching practices, and career pathways for the energy industry. 

In 2018, the Center for Renewable Energy Advanced Technological Education (CREATE) received funding from the National Science Foundation to administer an Energy Storage Project with the overarching goal of advancing the renewable energy sector by facilitating integration of energy storage technology into existing two-year college programs. The goals for this project included gathering expertise, conducting job task and curriculum gap analyses, producing instructional materials, implementing pilot energy storage courses, and providing professional development for college instructors. The project's initial task was to work with educators to gather knowledge and expertise around energy storage technologies and energy education. Widespread adoption of energy storage is only beginning in the U.S. and, subsequently, energy storage-related educational programs are few; conversely, energy storage education efforts have already been pioneered and established in Europe, most notably in Germany. As a result, CREATE leveraged its history of improving energy education through international cooperation and organized a study tour to Germany for nine renewable energy educators to examine innovations in renewable energy and energy storage and to research how these technologies are incorporated into German workforce preparation. In the planning and conducting international professional development opportunities for educators, two distinct challenges arise: that of ensuring academic rigor and of anchoring and capturing learning, especially given the additional cognitive load presented by being abroad. CREATE employs an evidence-based, international collaboration model - developed and improved over the course of two previous study tours - to meet these challenges. The learning plan consists of pre-travel online activities, knowledge capture and collaborative sharing during travel, and post travel reflection. These activities combine to support educators in gathering and preserving knowledge gains and to facilitate collaborative knowledge-building that leverages the expertise and skills of the participant cohort. While this paper presents the results of the CREATE professional development model, however the findings are not limited to energy storage or to the energy sector. Indeed, this analysis and the resulting set of recommended practices should be of interest to anyone interested in creating a meaningful educator professional development opportunity, especially if international travel is incorporated.