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.