1. Presented by: Joseph Osunde
PROGRAMMING AND NON- PROGRAMMING MODULES – AN INVESTIGATION OF REPRESENTATION BY GENDER AT THE OPEN UNIVERSITY
Presented by: Joseph Osunde

2. Importance of study: Background: The “Shrinking pipeline phenomenon”
Improved female representation since 1990 in higher education but not technology( computing & engineering)
The Open University is not different – computing (Q62) and joint computing & IT (Q67) programmes
Specific studies indicate that there are pedagogical differences in programming courses between male and female students as well as learning technology (Rubio et al., 2015; Scott et al., 2015)
Gateway to coding(G2C) is C&C initiative - pedagogical and software approach.
Importance of study:
Contribution to STEM pedagogy and The Open University commitment to improve student experience
Ever increasing opportunities in Technology sector
Computing is a key area for global competition, where gender- inclusivity promotes diversity which improves products of software teams and productivity
McKinsey & Company (2015) “companies in the top quartile for diversity(gender & ethnicity) financially outperform those in the bottom quartile”

3. Aim of study:
Investigate if there are differences in perception and learning outcomes between female and male students at The Open University with programming and non-programming modules/degrees.
Methodology:
a. Literature review
In depth literature review – distance and non-distance study programmes
Review of The Open University specific literature
b. Analysis of related data
Athena SWAN
The Open University SEAMS data
eSTEeM projects.
Outputs:
Conceptual framework proposed and designed
Journal and conference publications
Interaction with relevant specialist communities
Liaising with module teams and chairs(M250, G2C content etc..) on implementation of elements of the framework in module content and assessment.
Future work:
Collection of data on impact of framework to provide an empirical response to current issue.