MOOCs as facilitator: Online learning and women in STEM

The scarcity of female students in computer science programs is one of the most troubling challenges facing the discipline today. Enrollment of women in computer science undergraduate courses has fallen by over 50% from its high point in the 1980s, and is believed to be due, in part, to unwelcoming...

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Published in2017 International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE/ITMC) pp. 482 - 486
Main Authors Lee, Minji, Starr-Mitchell, Kathaleen, Nunes, Lara, Black, Michael, Schmidt, Thomas
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.06.2017
Subjects
Computer science
Data science
Face
Mindset
MOOCs
Online Learning
Organizational Behavior
Sensors
STEM
Visualization
Women in STEM
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Summary:The scarcity of female students in computer science programs is one of the most troubling challenges facing the discipline today. Enrollment of women in computer science undergraduate courses has fallen by over 50% from its high point in the 1980s, and is believed to be due, in part, to unwelcoming classroom environments. We postulate that the virtual classroom offered by Massively Open Online Courses ("MOOC"s) may provide a more comfortable learning space for many female students. This paper relates the experience of three female upper-level computer science majors when encountering a MOOC classroom for the first time.
DOI:10.1109/ICE.2017.8279924