Title :
Wisetales: Sharing personal stories as informal learning experience for women in science and engineering
Author :
Sahib, Zina ; Vassileva, Julita
Author_Institution :
Univ. of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Abstract :
Women are underrepresented in the areas of science and engineering, both in academia and industry. This leads to weaker support networks, lower self confidence and lesser access to mentors. We investigate whether a community built with a specific purpose to allow women in science and engineering to share personal stories can support women to reflect and learn from each other´s experience. This paper presents the design of WISEtales, a new online community for sharing personal stories. It discusses the design and the potential role of the community as an informal learning tool based on results of an exploratory user study.
Keywords :
gender issues; social networking (online); social sciences computing; WISEtales; academia; engineering; industry; informal learning tool; online community; personal stories; science; user study; Biochemistry; Career development; Design engineering; Ecosystems; Employee welfare; Employment; Engineering profession; IEEE news; Social factors; Writing; cold start; motivation; online community; participation; women in science and engineering;
Conference_Titel :
Digital Ecosystems and Technologies, 2009. DEST '09. 3rd IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Istanbul
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2345-3
Electronic_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2346-0
DOI :
10.1109/DEST.2009.5276724