Is There Still a Gender Myth: Science Fields for Boys and Humanities for Girls?

Abstract

MEXT, Japan (2006 and 2016) reported the numbers of university students' enrollments. In the area of Electric Communication Engineering, particular, it is almost 16 times differences in 2006 between men (132,404) and women (8152). It is almost 10 times difference between men (103,476) and women (9546) in 2016. The authors of this study, however, believe that gender preference of choosing a study area does not mean that either men or women are good at one particular study area. Thus, the aim of this study is therefore to examine whether there are some gender trends about the electric communication engineering area. In particular, this study focuses on looking at the use of online course tools by both male and female university students. This study firstly uses questionnaires for students to see their insights towards using online course tools for their English classes. Secondly, this study sees the actual use of online course tools by counting numbers of access by students who enrolled in our English classes. The questionnaire results reveal that 27 % of women in this study felt confident while 16.7% of men felt either confident or strongly confident about using their PC. The numbers of actual access to online course tools reveal that women accessed (M=1066) more than men (M=838.2). These results suggest the traditional gender stereotype has been changing and at the conference, the authors will discuss why it is happening.



Author Information
Yoshihiko Yamamoto, Shizuoka University, Japan
Maki Ikoma, Ritsumeikan University, Japan

Paper Information
Conference: ACE2017
Stream: Learning Experiences, Student Learning & Learner Diversity

This paper is part of the ACE2017 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon