Abstract:

Science and the technological development have had a significant impact on the modern society and the people way of living, including the means of communication. In particular the computer science has influenced all the fields and the way of our lives, including communication. Despite the fact that Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) permeates the entire modern world, the number of students who choose to pursue careers in STEM areas is very small compared to other careers. In particular, considering the gender, the gap widens even further. In this work, we present a university-industry program designed to stimulate STEM education and to foster females interests at an early age and help them continue to grow and develop in these areas, preparing and positioning them to pursue higher education and careers in STEM. Here we focus on the initiative of a Computer Programming Course. In 2019 the course was offered in person for girls, high-school students, at one of the most prestigious Brazilian Engineering School, the Aeronautics Institute of Technology, the so-called Code Like a Girl Project. For the year 2020, a virtual version of the course was considered to increase the number of participants and, consequently, the impact of the project. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic this option became the only possible. Despite from the fact that there are a lot of online programming courses, there are few in Portuguese and fewer taught exclusively by women. Moreover, up to now, STEM education in formal school settings in Brazil does not contemplate programming. Thus, and Introduction Course on Computer Programming fully in Portuguese and given by our female graduate students was a differential. The course was prepared to be made available on an open platform on the internet, the Youtube. With this, the public had access to the course regardless of geographic location, being also an interesting activity for these pandemic times. The course material was designed with the target audience of young people from high school and sought to disseminate the activity of computer programming in a playful and attractive way. For this, two platforms were used to assimilate the concepts inherent to computer programming: the Scratch platform (scratch.mit.edu), a graphic environment for block programming developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Python Programming Language (www.python.org). The course includes 18 videos lasting approximately 20 minutes per video and is available on the Women in STEM Project channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/MulheresemSTEM2D. Launched on February 7, 2021, the course had more than 500 views in the first weekend after its availability, and there was also an increase in enrollments in the Project channel. The article will present course statistics and feedback from your audience through likes and comments. The Course showed a way, during the pandemic crisis, to open opportunities for innovation and education, which can be explored for the sake of girls and increasing of students in STEM areas.

Keywords:

Women in STEM, Online Programming Course, gender gap, STEM education.