Family Friendly Course Schedule

Back to All Actions

What is the Action?

Implement a guaranteed family friendly schedule which commits to a schedule where by no lectures/labs are timetabled outside of the 9:30am-4pm time span to benefit those with family/carer’s responsibilities. This strategy benefits all students.

Quick Facts to Support this Action

Evidence shows that a computer science course can be particularly attractive to female applicants especially where the course applicants include mature students, if a family friendly schedule is guaranteed. Requests from other students demonstrated that the need of a set timetable is desired by all students, and a degree offering such a structure can be perceived as more attractive for all.

Ways to Implement This Action

The change needs to be made on a policy level. To consider is the following:

➤ Identify?

Who will identify as those with family/carer’s responsibility?

➤ Benefits who?

Will the change benefit all students (e.g., is there a pool of mature students)?
Consider on whether and how the newly established schedule impacts current staff – e.g., whether it means that it is beneficial (or the opposite) for staff, especially those with carer’s responsibilities as well.
Consider what hours are needed for the policy to be beneficial, e.g., the start of mandatory attendance from 9:30am (as the majority of childcare facilities start their services at 9am in Ireland), or suggest other times where applicable.

➤ Survey?

Is there a need to survey existing students to see if the proposed change is valuable?

➤ Existing Schedules

How does this change affect the existing lecture/labs schedule?

➤ Changes to Schedule

If an amendment of the existing schedule is required, appropriate allocation of resources for the new schedule is to take place.

➤ Policy Documents

Relevant policy documents need to be amended.

How will the Action look like when implemented?

There will be no academic appointments required to attend for students with family/carer’s responsibilities, or for all students, where applicable.

Evaluation Approach

Seek feedback from students who apply, to identify whether one of the reasons for their application was the family friendly schedule. A sample survey targeting first year students covers family friendly schedule as a possible reason for application. It is available in the Resources section.

J. Siegeris. Mehr Diversitat durch Mono-Edukation. In ¨ Fachtag. Hochschuldid. Informatik, volume 9, pages 65–74, Hagen, Berlin, 2021. HDI.

KEEP ACCORDIAN COLLAPSED

Do not delete. This is important to keep the accordian items closed on initial load. Keep this at the top of the accordian stack.

The accordian will auto-open the first item on load. This item has custom css to keep it hidden. This means the user cannot see that it is open thus manually overriding the auto-open.

Questionnaire for first-year students - Female Only CS Programme at HTW Berlin

Translated from the original German version, which was kindly provided by Prof. Juliane Siegeris (HTW Berlin)