Fostering women's participation to STEM through MOOCs

Gender stereotypes and under-representation of women in STEM affect the way girls and young women perceive themselves, and it is one of the reasons for their limited presence in the STEM field.
Believing that MOOC and gender-balanced educational content in general can be part of the solution, in this MOOC through the voices from the field of teachers, instructional designers, visual designers, students, and people who work for a more inclusive environment in the STEM field we will understand how to build a more inclusive environment.
We present a toolkit created in the frame of FOSTWOM Erasmus+ project to develop MOOCs according to a gender conscious perspective with a particular focus on: content and storytelling to be used, gender-aware language, gender-aware use of images and visual materials. The aim is to offer a practical tool to all people willing to create educational content in a gender-conscious perspective.

• WEEK 1 – The importance of gender-balance in STEM Field
• WEEK 2 – The FOSTWOM Toolkit
• WEEK 3 – The Toolkit: scalability and limits