Abstract

EIA-0305859, Jean C. Robinson, Indiana University

Title: Toward Gender Equitable Outcomes in Higher Education: Beyond Computer Science

This ITWF award provides support to investigate 15 tertiary education programs in information science, information systems, instructional systems technology, and informatics, with computer science programs as a baseline comparison, in five major IT degree-granting institutions. The purpose of the study is to determine which universities/departments/programs are most successful at recruiting and retaining female students, and what factors favor female success over time. The programs are hypothesized to be differentially responsive to female students due to differences in academic culture, operationalized in terms of the availability of mentorship, role models, peer support networks, grant programs, and other resources at the departmental, university, and disciplinary levels. These measures of organizational culture will be correlated with measures of student outcomes and self-reports of student experiences. Data about students' experiences will be collected through a web-based survey of a sample of 5,000 students, followed by three face-to-face interviews with an estimated 155 students, over-sampling for females, over a two-year period. In addition, faculty, administrators and staff in the study programs will be interviewed by telephone and in person.

Intellectual merit. Previous research has identified culture as among the most important factors that discourage girls and women from studying computer science. This project contributes to knowledge in this area by operationalizing culture in the context of academic IT programs and systematically investigating its contribution to student experiences and outcomes. The project will identify encouraging and discouraging factors, and produce comparative statistics, that can be used as a baseline in future research on IT education and gender, much as this project draws on findings from previous research on female students in computer science.

Broader impacts. As the need for information technology professionals continues to grow, so too does the need to engage women and girls in courses of study that will qualify them for IT-related careers. Findings of which factors encourage or discourage the success of women students can be used to inform programmatic recommendations aimed at moving more women into the IT pipeline through a diverse range of educational programs. To the extent that new IT paradigms such as are taught in schools of information, informatics, education, and business help to create those cultural associations, they can contribute to reducing the persistent gender segregation in academic IT-related programs and thus IT employment.