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IT courses need "radical" change to attract women

By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 10 Feb 2011 at 13:28

Computing courses need to change to make them more appealing to women, according to a computing science professor at the University of Alberta.

As we revealed in the latest issue of PC Pro (on sale now), women can excel in technology industries, but are still massively under represented in the industry and on university courses. In 2009, for example, male graduates in computer science and maths courses outnumbered women by 7,455 to 1,545.

"If you want more females in computing science, you need to radically change the curriculum,” said Mike Carbonaro of the university's faculty of education. “You need to provide activities that are more gender neutral so that they'll be attracted to the discipline."

If you want more females in computing science, you need to radically change the curriculum

The researchers found that women were far more interested in designing and building games than they were in playing them, suggesting that systems that teach students how to make, rather than use, programs could be beneficial for female students.

In the study, students were taught a program called ScriptEase, which allowed them to develop and design their own games, with women working alongside men with more experience in game programming.

The findings suggested the female students enjoyed creating games as much as their male counterparts and preferred game construction to activities such as story writing. The researchers also claimed in the process the female students had gained and used practical skills that were crucial to understanding computing science.

"The female students built games that were every bit as good as the male students made, even though the male students had more experience with playing games," said Carbonaro.

"In terms of the quality of the games developed and the abstraction skills that the students learned, which could translate to knowledge of competing science, there was no difference between the two groups."

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User comments

It so does not help when university computer deparments have male pigs running them - my friend at university was told by the head of deparment sleep with me and you get a first.

no wonder the unversity asking the deparment why they hve none or very small intake of females

Mark

By mprltd on 10 Feb 2011

pathetic

"You need to provide activities that are more gender neutral" - yes! And add quotas as well, at least 25% of women in the IT courses! And in other under-represented areas, such as heavy industry and army, for good measure.

By Lomskij on 10 Feb 2011

Male dominated workplace

My wife has a degree in computing and has been working as a web developer for about 5 years. In all that time she's only come across 2 other woman programmers. The people she's worked with have typically resembled the IT caricature - football mad, uncommunative, workaholics with limited communication skills and beards, who just don't share their knowledge. She's considering throwing in the towel and moving professions, even before she reaches 30. To entice women and keep them in the industry there needs to be a big shake up in the philosphy of IT professionals and they need to become a little nmore human!

By combey on 10 Feb 2011

Male dominated workplace

By combey on 10 Feb 2011

Rant over...

Got a little carried away - they don't all like football or have beards, and most are decent people! The truth is, a workplace that is male dominated will typically have a male-orientated atmosphere, which isn't that appealing to women. To get more women in, there needs to be a shift in perspective, with a greater need for sharing, communication and certainly less stress / workload.

By combey on 10 Feb 2011

There's no need for quotas. We're not trying to encourage people into social work here -- IT is a big and lucrative (if you can get work) sector. Quotas at the entry stage will just make male applicants feel frustrated.

It works in other fields too, law is a big, lucrative and traditionally male dominated sector but UK university law student intake is over 50% female. You don't need to use quotas for things that are already appealing. People aren't idiots and incentives like "good job at the end", "interesting course content" and so on attract people of all colours, genders and creeds.

By steviesteveo12 on 11 Feb 2011

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