This course aims to raise awareness about the importance of gender balance in the STEM field and illustrates a tool for the creation of gender-balanced MOOCs. Gender stereotypes and under-representation of women in STEM affect the way girls and young women perceive themselves, and it is one of the reasons for their limited presence in the STEM field. Believing that MOOC and gender-balanced educational content, in general, can be part of the solution, in this MOOC through the voices from the field of teachers, instructional designers, visual designers, students, and people who work for a more inclusive environment in the STEM field we will understand how to build a more inclusive environment.
We present a toolkit created in the frame of FOSTWOM Erasmus+ project to develop MOOCs according to a gender conscious perspective with a particular focus on: content and storytelling to be used, gender-aware language, gender-aware use of images and visual materials. The aim is to offer a practical tool to all people willing to create educational content in a gender-conscious perspective.
Learning Schedule
The course is organized in 3 weeks.
WEEK 1 – The importance of gender-balance in STEM Field
WEEK 2 – The FOSTWOM Toolkit
WEEK 3 – The Toolkit: scalability and limits
In particular, in week 1 we will listen to the voices from the field of people working toward a more inclusive STEM environment.
Week 2 illustrates the toolkit and the checklist created by FOSTWOM Erasmus+ Project, with a special focus on hints and examples coming from STEM MOOCs field and the approach used in developing it.
Week 3 is about the reusability of the checklist and its limits, giving a more broaden perspective toward universal design for learning.
