Presenter: Mikaylie Parco, College of Life Sciences, Biology
Authors: Mikaylie Parco, Yongyong Xia, Sierra Nichols, Elizabeth Bailey
Faculty Advisor: Elizabeth Bailey, College of Life Sciences, Biology
Institution: Brigham Young University
Undergraduate women have long been underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, but representation varies by discipline. For example, more than 60% of undergraduate bioscience majors have been women in recent years, but more quantitative fields, such as computer science, continue to be dominated by men in enrollment. A previous study conducted in the life sciences found that women participated less and performed slightly worse than men when taught by a male instructor or when women were in the minority of the class. Bioinformatics is a younger interdisciplinary field that utilizes methods of computer science to investigate biological phenomena. Because bioinformatics is a more quantitative discipline, we hypothesized the gender differences in bioinformatics to be more exaggerated than other bioscience fields. We observed seven classes required for the bioinformatics major at a large, private university. Six of these courses were taught by biology faculty and were listed as biology courses, but they had a focus on bioinformatics techniques. The rest of the courses were taught by the computer science department. Pairs of student researchers attended each class three times, recorded any participation events observed during those periods, and analyzed final course grades to determine if men and women differed in participation or performance. Our results showed that women participated less than men, however the gender differences were larger in the computer science courses than in the computer-focused biology courses. These participation discrepancies were greatly reduced during “breakout periods,” in which the professor walked around the room as students worked on problems together. Women were more likely to participate and ask questions during this time when it was not in front of the entire class. Although we found evidence of participation differing by gender, our analysis of final course grades suggested that grades were indistinguishable by gender.