Increased diversity in technical education

Purpose and goal

The long term goal is to increase the diversity of technical higher education by starting where uneven recruitment is worst today: IT education. In this study, we have developed a first version of an instrument for measuring high school youth attitudes to higher IT studies through a pre and a post test. Between the tests the study group was given access to a short introductory programming course. The aim was to investigate whether the course could influence their attitudes to higher education, and if so how.

Results and expected effects

A preliminary evaluation of the responses shows that those who elected to do the programming course, on average, had not attempted other programming courses before. These students were generally positive to engineering education at university and plan to attend such programmes. However, this group do not rank their math skills among the best in their respective classes, but have relatively weak confidence in mathematics. Just as many girls as boys chose to take the course, however, low turnout is problematic for the interpretation.

Approach and implementation

The low participation may have been caused by questionnaire length and design, lack of time, lack of interest, difficulties in recruiting study participants, etc. The reasons need to be analyzed before further development. However, with the now established contacts the opportunities for better recruitment ahead are promising. Just as many girls as boys chose to take the course. The respondents had the perception that the proportion of women studying programming is only marginally lower than the proportion of women in engineering programs - although in reality it is much lower.