Gender Differences in Engineering Design Thinking in a Project-Based STEAM Course

Wan Hsuan Yen*, Chi Cheng Chang, John Willliams

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM)-related fields remains a concern for educators and the engineering community. Females tend to need more social support and learn better within a group. Using Project-based Learning (PjBL) seems to provide a supportive approach for female students to engage with STEAM. We adopted IDEO’s design process to evaluate the progress both female and male students made after participating in a PjBL-STEAM course. 137 high school students were recruited in this course to tackle the task to build a truss tower. Both female and male students evidenced significant progress in all constructs of engineering design thinking ability. In addition, there was no significant difference between female and male students’ posttest result. Our research echoes earlier research that female students can benefit from group work and develop substantial learning outcomes from PjBL-STEAM course.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInnovative Technologies and Learning - 4th International Conference, ICITL 2021, Proceedings
EditorsYueh-Min Huang, Chin-Feng Lai, Tânia Rocha
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages557-566
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)9783030915391
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Event4th International Conference on Innovative Technologies and Learning, ICITL 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 2021 Nov 292021 Dec 1

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume13117 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference4th International Conference on Innovative Technologies and Learning, ICITL 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period2021/11/292021/12/01

Keywords

  • Engineering design thinking
  • Female engineer
  • Gender
  • Project-based learning
  • STEAM
  • Science-technology-engineering-art-math

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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