Using ICT to improve the gender balance in engineering education

This paper summarizes the activities, contents and overall outcomes of an international seminar organized jointly by two working groups of SEFI: the Working Group on Women in Engineering and the Working Group on Information and Communication Technologies. The seminar theme was 'Improving the gender balance in engineering education using ICT methods and contents' and was hosted by Oulu Polytechnic, Finland, 16-17 May 2002. In regard to ICT methods and contents, it is clear that the trend away from traditional teaching methods and a concentration on narrow technical contents is being replaced by a more holistic pedagogy that involves extensive use of ICT to provide both content and context of the material being learned by the student. The intrinsic advantages of ICT-based teaching are that it permits comprehensive use of resource-based learning, provides flexibility in learning and facilitates wide support for individual communication and networking. These features are particularly attractive to women.