To reduce isolation, the literature recommends grouping two or more female or minority students together when group work is performed in courses where they are underrepresented, but it can be time consuming for instructors to hand select ideal groups. GroupEng – an open-source program available to all educators – was created to make it easy for instructors to use variables such as gender, race, student performance (e.g. early test scores), and student interests to auto generate balanced groups in minutes. This paper by the creators of GroupEng talks about the research behind the program, compares the use of GroupEng with hand selected groups in real courses, and explains how any instructor can use the program in their STEM course.
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Source: |
Dimiduk, T. G., & Dimiduk, K. (2011). Effectively Assign Student Groups by Applying Multiple User-prioritized Academic and Demographic Factors Using a New Open Source Program, GroupEng. Conference Proceedings of WEPAN 2011 National Conference Advancing Women: Transforming Engineering Education. Seattle, WA: Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN). Retrieved from http://www.groupeng.org/files/GroupEng_Paper_WEPAN.pdf |
The WomenTech Educators Training got us thinking intentionally about who we were going to target for outreach, how we were going to target them, and how we would follow up to make sure we had actual results linked to the different programs and events that we were holding. Since then, it has grown organically and blossomed into something that our college just does naturally.
I think getting together as a team with intention—because we're all so busy—and developing a written plan that we could stick to was what made all the difference. I don’t think we would have ever done that if it wasn't for the WomenTech Educators Training.