In the last few years, several initiatives based on extracurricular activities have been organized in many countries around the world, with the aim to reduce the digital gender gap in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields. Among them, the Digital Girls summer camp, organized every year since 2014 by two Italian universities with the aim to attract female students to ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) disciplines, represents quite a unique initiative for its characteristics of long-duration (3–4 entire weeks) and complete gratuitousness for the participants. The COVID-19 emergency imposed severe changes to such activities, that had to be modified and carried out in the online mode as a consequence of social distancing. However, on one hand, the general lack of high-quality evaluations of these initiatives hinders the possibility to understand the actual impact of extracurricular activities on the future academic choices of the participants. On the other hand, the availability of data collected over different editions of Digital Girls has allowed us to analyze the summer camp impact and to evaluate the pros and cons of in-presence and online activities. The main contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we present an overview of existing experiences, at the national (Italian) and international levels, to increase female participation in integrated STEM and ICT fields. Second, we analyze how summer camp participation can influence girls’ future academic choices, with specific attention to ICT-related disciplines. In particular, the collection of a significant amount of data through anonymous surveys conducted before and after the camp activities over the two editions allowed us to evidence the different impacts of in-presence and online extracurricular activities.
In the last few years, workforce with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) competencies has proved to be crucial for countries' innovative capacity and global competitiveness. Yet women are vastly underrepresented in STEM and, in particular, in ICT and computer science fields, both among workers and degree holders: this gap hinders the possibility for ICT employment to be strengthened and for women to take advantage of career opportunities, thus perpetuating gender inequalities in these disciplines. To counteract these effects and attract girls towards ICT-related fields of study and careers, several initiatives have been organised all around the world, such as summer camps and dedicated extracurricular activities. However, these initiatives are usually not supported by proper evaluation tools allowing researchers and practitioners to understand the actual benefits of the carried-out activities on girls' competencies and future attitudes. In this paper, we propose an evaluation tool for extracurricular activities aimed at reducing the gender gap in ICT. The proposed tool aims at capturing both a quantitative and a qualitative evaluation, including an Implicit Association Test (IAT) along with a more traditional questionnaire consisting of thematic sections designed to analyse various aspects of the activities' impact on girls. The tool has been applied in the context of two summer camps related to national and international projects aimed at attracting girls towards computer science and STEM disciplines: the ‘Digital Girls’ project, organised since 2014 by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in collaboration with other universities and local institutions, and the “STEM for Future” Erasmus+ project. Based on the results obtained by the summer camp case studies, we discuss some critical elements that can hinder the efficacy of the evaluation tool, giving suggestions to overcome these potential issues.
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