Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Lena Strömbeck
Dept. of Computer and Information Science
Linköping University
In many computer-related educational programs there is a marked absence of female students. In 1998 the Swedish council for higher education sponsored a small project for studying the student preferences in existing educational programs, with an emphasis on gender.
Our department gives a large number of courses, including 5 educational programs covering computer science as a main topic. All of these programs last 4 years or longer. The study was conducted by sending out 436 questionnaires to students randomly selected from these programs.
This talk summarises the results of the study for two educational programs: Computer Engineering (D-program) and Information Technology (IT-program), both lasting 4.5 years and resulting in a Master of Engineering degree. The first program is a traditional program with 120 students (increased to 150 fall 2000). The second, a recently developed program based on the PBL methodology, and with a slightly larger component of courses from the faculty of arts. There are 35 students attending this program every year. Since there are few female students in these programs all the female students were selected for investigation (34 in D and 29 in the IT program). These numbers were matched with equal numbers of male students randomly selected. The results presented here are based on 28 students (male and females) answering from the D program (41%), and 25 students answering from the IT program (43%).
The topics addressed in the questionnaire came under five headings: background, expectations, general study situation, appreciation of different topical areas: educational form and examination set-up, and aspirations/future plans.
The results of the study confirm some aspects common to both educational programs, but there were also some differences. Both men and women typically choose computer engineering due to good career opportunities, followed by personal interest for computers. However, among IT students, women were more likely to choose this program due to the combination of topical areas, whereas 42% of men chose the education expecting a better gender balance. 28% of the whole group chose the program due to the PBL-based educational setting. Although many students in both programs thought the examinations were demanding, the only ones not considering exams as difficult in the IT program were women.
As far as topics were concerned, male IT students considered humanistic topics as more central for the program compared to the female students (75% of men compared to 46% of women). In the D program, women were more likely to think that there was too much mathematics in the program. In the IT program women were more likely to think that mathematics as well as programming were central to the program.They also thought that there was too little programming in the education (69% thought that it is less than what it should be). Otherwise, preferences for the topics and their assessment of the difficulty or the extent of coverage in the programs was broadly the same.
Among those answering the question, in the D program a larger proportion of women had at some stage considered to terminate (stop) their education (45% compared to 24% of men). In the IT program, the tendency is wider among men (45% compared with 36%).
The full report
on this study is available on-line (in Swedish).