Title: Gender Issues in Studying CS - Balkan Perspective Mirjana Ivanovic, Zoran Budimac, Zoran Putnik, Nikola Trkulja 10th Workshop
1Gender Issues in Studying CS - Balkan
PerspectiveMirjana Ivanovic, Zoran
Budimac,Zoran Putnik, Nikola Trkulja 10th
Workshop Software Engineering Education and
Reverse Engineering, Ivanjica, September 2010
2AGENDA
- Goals of the research and motivation
- Questionnaire Structure, Participants
- Questionnaire Data Processing, Results
- Further Plans and Activities
- Conclusion
3 Goals of the research
- Inspired by results presented at DAAD WS 2008
- Exploring male/female undergraduate CS students
- General success rate
- Professional confidence, ambitions and interests
- Level of satisfaction with the choice of studies
- Attitudes and beliefs towards the gender issue
4 Motivation
- Take into consideration and compare male/female
opinion - Considerable lack of female students at
universities worldwide, despite the different
supporting acts made by academic community - Find reasons for inadequate involvement of women
in IT industry and research in Balkan region by
exploring both male and female opinions - Express key findings and give some useful
suggestions in order to improve situation
5AGENDA
- Goals of the research and motivation
- Questionnaire Structure, Participants
- Questionnaire Data Processing, Results
- Further Plans and Activities
- Conclusion
6Questionnaire Structure
- Questionnaire consisted of about hundred
questions. - Divided into three main sections
- General data
- Motivation for enrollment
- Ambitions regarding future career
- There were two type of questions
- Nominal scale questions (yes/no)
- Ordinal scale questions (1 to 5 Lickert scale)
7Questionnaire General data section
- Students were asked questions like
- Average mark?
- Are you more comfortable with CS-related, than
with math-related courses? - Do you feel worried about your future career in
the field of CS? - Rate the quality of studies on various points?
- During your studies, have you felt as part of
academic community? - Rate your skills in each of the listed aspects?
- Which grade did you achieve in the various
courses?
8Questionnaire Motivation for enrollment
- Students were asked questions like
- How did the following factors influence your
decision to enroll this faculty? - Which of listed fields should be covered with
more courses? - Role-models which inspired you to study CS?
- Do you plan to continue you education with master
studies?
9Questionnaire Ambitions regarding future
career
- Students were asked questions like
- On which job position from the list do you see
yourself after completion of studies? - On which job position do you see yourself in 10
years? - Point out which fields of CS overall promise the
most?
10Questionnaire Participants
We want to thank to all our collegues who helped
us with data collection in their countries
State Gender Female Male
Albania 11 13
Serbia 42 66
Macedonia 58 114
Bosnia and Herzegovina 20 31
Total 131 224
11AGENDA
- Goals of the research and motivation
- Questionnaire Structure, Participants
- Questionnaire Data Processing, Results
- Further Plans and Activities
- Conclusion
12Questionnaire Data Processing
- All data processing was done using R environment
for statistical computing and graphics. - Various non-parametric technics were applied
- Nominal scale data was analysed using Fisher
exact test and Phi association coefficient. - Lickert scale data was analysed using
MannWhitneyWilcoxon test, and Freemans Theta
coefficient. - Emphasis was put on finding associations between
gender and some other question.
13Questionnaire Results
- Do you expect to have a successful career in the
field of CS?
14Questionnaire Results
- Are you more comfortable with CS-related, than
with math-related courses? - Female students
- prefer math
- related courses.
15Questionnaire Results
- Do you think studies positively influence your
intellectual development? - More male students
- think it did not.
16Questionnaire Results
- Rate quality of CS courses?
- p value 0.81
- What about Math courses?
17Questionnaire Results
- Rate quality of Math courses?
- p value 0.000573
- Maybe not so clear from these charts, but female
students rate Math courses higher.
18Questionnaire Results
- How did interest in computers influence your
decision to enroll this faculty ?
19Questionnaire Results
- How did parents influence your decision to enroll
this faculty ?
20Questionnaire Results
- In order to prepare for successful career in CS,
do you think there should be more electronics
courses?
21Questionnaire Results
- Please rate knowledge of informatics of female
teachers? - p value 10e-6
22Questionnaire Results
- Please rate knowledge of informatics of male
teachers? - p value 0.005
23Questionnaire Results
- Is Computer Science good field for women?
24Questionnaire Results
- Is Computer Science good field for men?
25Questionnaire Results
- Do you consider there is a lack of women in CS ?
- p value lt 0.05
26Questionnaire Results
- In CS, women tend to be more careful than men?
- p value is
- almost 0.
27AGENDA
- Goals of the research and motivation
- Questionnaire Structure, Participants
- Questionnaire Data Processing, Results
- Further Plans and Activities
- Conclusion
28Further Plans and Activities
- Add more countries into the research
- Conduct statistical tests for each country, and
found out if there is significant differences
beetwen countries. - Also find correlations beetwen answers on some
pairs of lickert scale questions. - Interpret computed statistics and work towards
writing a paper on this subject.
29AGENDA
- Goals of the research and motivation
- Questionnaire Structure, Participants
- Questionnaire Data Processing, Results
- Further Plans and Activities
- Conclusion
30Conclusion
- Present satisfaction with the choice of studies
- Participants expressed serious and ambitious
attitudes regarding their career objectives - Female students are little bit more ambitious,
maybe because their male collegues do not fully
recognize their hard work. - Some number of male students think that they can
do pretty much anything better then females.
31Thank you for your attention You are welcome
to ask questions?