Startling Findings
June 29, 2008 · by Tammy Adler
I’ve talked in the past about the GET IT (Girls Educating Themselves about Information Technology) roll-playing exercise one of our members, Kacie Conroy, created. Kacie has met with three different local Girl Scout Troops, working with each of them to learn different information technology roles so they understand what types of information technology careers are available to them upon college graduation.
During these exercises, Kacie gathered some startling statistics that I want to share with you. She has asked the 21 girls, from her three sessions, a series of questions prior to and after each role-playing exercise. Here is a synopsis of the questions along with corresponding responses.
At the beginning of the sessions, none of the girls were familiar with information technology or the Business Analyst, Database Analysts, Technical Writer, Quality Assurance Analyst roles, though some had heard of the Project Manager, Developer and Graphics Designer roles.
Only 1 out of 21 students was willing to consider Information Technology as a career prior to the roll-playing exercise, and 17 of the 21 students wanted to add it to their list of potential careers after the exercise.
None of the girls felt, either prior to or after the roll-playing exercise that boys were a better fit for information technology roles. This pleased me.
While I didn’t think most middle school students would have heard about specific roles in information technology, I was shocked that none of them, prior to the exercise, could define what information technology was and that only one would consider information technology.
After the roll-playing exercise, students had a much better appreciation of the definition of information technology and whether the field interests them.
If young students know nothing about the information technology field, how may we better educate them? It begins with something as small as these roll-playing exercises and must extend to educators, guidance counselors, parents and all of us.
The one thing that is not going to change in business is the need for easily assessable information, and Information Technology is the answer to this challenge.
Filed in: Company Insight Comments (0)
Comments
There are no comments for this entry.
Commenting is not available in this section entry.