Increasing Gender Diversity in STEM Erasmus Project

Project Title

Increasing Gender Diversity in STEM

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Access for disadvantaged; Gender equality / equal opportunities; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The general objectives for the project were to contribute to increasing the number of graduates by attracting a broader cross-section of society into higher education, and reducing the number of students who drop out without completing their course and to widen the vision of what means to become an engineer.

This project has been a collaboration between universities and secondary schools from six European countries: Karslruher Institut für Technologie (Germany), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Politecnico di Torino (Italy), KU Leuven (Belgium), Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and Técnico Lisboa (Portugal). The following secondary school partners have been involved: Vallauri (Italy), Our Lady’s School (Ireland), Norra Real (Sweden) and Heilig-Hartinstituut Heverlee (Belgium).

The output of the project is an online filtering tool that uses multiple dimensions to match prospective students to current students and successful graduates. The tool was developed to provide intuitive and easy-to-understand feedback to aid prospective students in making a more informed choice by broadening their understanding of engineering as a career and encouraging them to reflect on their fears and prejudices regarding the field. The ANNA tool (www.projectanna.eu) represents the main final output of the project.

The first work package defined what kind of questions should be included in the filtering tool. Gender-specific issues and strategies regarding the questions’ styles and data collection methods were defined. Cultural, social and educational nuances that were relevant to each of the participant’s locations were considered. It was determined that the tool should focus on supporting high school students by suggesting that the user explore engineering as a possible future career. Therefore, it does not include tests of abilities or a form of selection. Furthermore, a strategic decision was made to focus the content on apprehension and to respond to possible stereotypes instead of focusing on psychometric data, such as different thinking and personality styles and aptitude testing.

During the development of the tool that was called ANNA, it was decided that it should search a database of alumni and not match prospective students’ ideas and thoughts with those of engineers to clarify who fits the engineer profile. The project is clear that no such correlations should be made. The tool’s main point is to provide an opportunity for students to explore the feelings and uncertainties that current engineers and engineering students had before starting their university careers.

To collect data from current engineering students and alumni, a software tool was created in parallel while working on a model of the ANNA tool. The filtering tool and the visualisation of data were developed to allow high school students to match their views and ideas about an engineering career to current students and graduates.

The prototype of the tool was tested on groups of high school students to gain valuable knowledge about both their attitude about the tool and the interface and visualisation of the tool. The high school students gave the following feedback:
• It challenges you to think about your stereotypes and perceptions.
• It makes a career in STEM more relatable when you can compare other people’s experiences.
• It makes you think of engineering as a career track, which is not highlighted often in school.

The pilot testing also revealed some faults:
• It was only focused on engineering and not the entire STEM area.
• It was too focused on gender. The students wanted to be recognised and given advice based on merit versus gender.
• It lacked sufficient profiles to do a proper search.

The final version of the tool consists of the following:
• A starting page, where a user can choose which language he/she wants to use. All pieces of information in the tool are available in Portuguese, Swedish, English, Italian, German and Flemish.
• An introduction video in English with subtitles in different languages
• Information for users and parents
• A search guide and illustrative presentation of data
• A short evaluation for the user after finalising the search in the database

Each partner university has been responsible for disseminating the ANNA tool locally. The project hosted a one-week training event in Lisbon in April 2019 and an open dissemination conferences in Stockholm June 2019. The tool is and will be available on it webpage even after the end of this project. If interest is shown from other universities to be a part of the tool, they will be used for tools and database collections. Ideas from the project have been the inspiration for further projects where one or more of the cooperating partners will implement the concept in other regions.

The work with in the project has been reported as a contribution for International Conference Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (TEEM)

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 360275 Eur

Project Coordinator

KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN & Country: SE

Project Partners

• KARLSRUHER INSTITUT FUER TECHNOLOGIE
• KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
• Our Lady’s School
• POLITECNICO DI TORINO
• INSTITUTO SUPERIOR TECNICO
• Norra Real
• Heilig Hartinstituut Pedagogische Humaniora