science as a very interdisciplinary subject, whereas students desired more interdisciplinary inclusion in teaching.
At this point a clear discrepancy between lecturers and students perceptions was indicated.
The interviewees also described
the low proportion of women and misconceptions about the subject of computer science. They also pointed out
large gaps in student experiences at
the beginning of their studies as the
main problem.
Teaching should continually use
interdisciplinarity and direct application orientation to associate the syllabus with meaning. This enhances
motivation and contributes to generating a realistic picture of computer
science. Also the (often negative and/
or false) public knowledge of com-
confidence of female students, which
has not been recognized in previous
surveys.
˲ The estimation of own capabilities in the field of programming revealed female students did not have
less experience but experience in different programming languages than
their fellow male students. Women
had more experience in Objective C,
Delphi, Pascal, Ruby, Python, and Java
Script, while men had more experiences in PHP, C#, Java, C++, C and HTML.
STATUS GROUP INTERVIEWS
Within the scope of the project, interviews with all relevant status groups of
the computer science faculty were conducted. Six professors, six postdocs, six
research associates, and 14 students
(in three groups) were interviewed.
The interviews revealed computer
science at RWTH Aachen University
displays a great openness and commitment with respect to the interests of
the students. Most of the interviewed
students share this opinion. Despite
this positive outlook, the interviews
also showed room for improvement in
several places.
There is still a demand for aware-
ness raising and communication of
the required know-how in the fields of
gender-neutral language, application
orientation, relation between technol-
ogy and society, interdisciplinarity,
and the estimation of technological
consequences. For example the major-
ity of respondents described computer
puter science and the often-incorrect
ideas about its subject matter was a
frequent topic in the interviews and
should be addressed.
As a consequence, gender- and di-
versity-sensitive teacher training and
a critical review of the department’s
public relations material, as well as the
university’s, are recommended. Fur-
thermore, the fact that computer sci-
ence is open to a multifaceted group of
persons and it offers various employ-
ment and specialization opportunities
should be emphasized.
The majority of respondents were
of the opinion that female role models
are able to enhance the motivation of
female pupils to study computer science. Thus the deployment of female
role models in information materials,
media, etc., as well as visiting schools,
should be encouraged. The persistent
“hacker” and “nerd” stereotypes should
be dismantled, especially in schools,
and it should become clear computer
science is not a subject for men only.
DOCUMEN T ANALYSIS
Within the framework of the project, a
thorough analysis of information material produced by the faculty and the university was carried out. Based on this
examination, advice for the preparation and combination of existing offers
could be recommended. Besides more
obvious points like a clearly structured
arrangement of information for brochures and university websites (
consideration of Web standards concerning
It is also important
to rectify the
often incorrect,
monotonous picture
of computer science
existing in society—
including the
persisting image of
predominately male
hackers and nerds.