The project aimed at developing, testing and disseminating a methodology based on the STEAM approach to enhance the Art Thinking skills of female students engaged in STEM careers in order to: - empower women STEM students to increase their chances of employment in high-level positions in the ICT labour market once they graduate. - increase the attractiveness of STEM courses for women. The specific objectives of the project were: - Design and disseminate a reference framework for assessing women STEM students’ Art Thinking capacity. This allows students to gain awareness of the skills they need to enhance in order to complement their curricula according to a STEAM approach. - Design and disseminate a training methodology to be used by STEM teachers in their teaching activities or by students themselves to enhance, through a set of training tools, their Art Thinking capacity. - Design and disseminate a VR-based educational game for enhancing art thinking capacity in women STEM students in an interactive and attractive way. - Create a certification system, in line with national and EU qualification frameworks, for recognition and certification of Art Thinking skills. This will allow women STEM students to prove their skills and
Despite the great efforts made by European policies and projects, and by policies and projects at national and local level, participation rates of women in STEM are still unsatisfying. Gender inequality is particularly evident in the ICT sector, where only 20% of graduates and 18% of ICT specialists are women. A similar situation is experienced also by two partner organisations engaged in tertiary level education in STEM disciplines. The applicant LTU reports that only 20% of students in its ICT courses are women, while they are 30% in ICT courses at CME. Both organisations need to increase these numbers and both organizations realized that in courses where arts and creativity are part of the curricula, numbers are better and close to 50%. The STEAM (Science - Technology - Engineering - Art - Math) approach may therefore be a key strategy to make STEM courses more attractive for women. Another problem addressed by the project is that women who graduate in ICT disciplines have less opportunities of being employed in high-level positions in the ICT labour market than their male colleagues. They therefore need to be empowered for increasing these opportunities. The STEAM approach may represent a valid solution also to meet this need