Hybrid Computer Science Courses

What is the Action?

To offer a hybrid computing course by adding another discipline alongside computer science.

Quick Facts to Support this Action

• An interdisciplinary environment within a computer science course has a high potential to interest all students regardless of their gender.

Examples of hybrid courses with higher-than-average proportion of female students: TU Dublin Computer Science International with a foreign language option (42% women with 23.1% average in Ireland) and Northeastern University CS+X – combined major with many options (39% women with 21.5% average in the U.S.)

• An interdisciplinary learning context has high potential to positively influence students’ attitudes towards computer science, particularly for students with low self-efficacy levels who are often female.
• The interdisciplinary aspect can help women identify with computer science by providing a context that is more meaningful and relatable.
• Interdisciplinary computing courses can attract a different pool of women to those typically deciding on computer science, who would have not enrolled to study computer science on its own.

Ways to Implement This Action

Research confirms that females with high math and high verbal ability tend to lean towards careers outside of STEM fields. One possible reason is the broader range of career options—such as law—that emphasise verbal strengths. To better engage this group, integrating a complementary discipline that values verbal ability alongside computing could be a powerful strategy.

What should be considered:

➤ Curriculum Split

➤ Combined Majors

➤ Life Sciences & Languages

➤ Inter-department Cooperation

Computer Science International

TU Dublin, Ireland

Undergraduate students

This is a 4-year undergraduate course with a language component alongside the main computing curriculum. Students study a foreign language (German, Mandarin or Korean) in the first three years of the course. There is a mandatory international experience in year 3: either an industry placement, an international study exchange for one semester in Europe, China or South Korea, or an opportunity to spend the whole year at one of the partner universities in either Finland, Germany or South Korea. The prospectus emphasises the international opportunities open to young professionals upon graduation.

Students participate in a mandatory online module The Global Classroom, which connects students from TU Dublin and its international partners and allows for inter-institutional team collaboration in projects. The rest of the modules are computer science-related. The full list is available here.

This course showed a doubled number of female enrolments compared to other computing programs at TU Dublin.

International Women´s Degree Programme in Computer Science

Hochschule Bremen, Germany

Undergraduate female students

The course is advertised as a women’s degree with two first semesters of foundation modules taught monoeducationally (for female students only). From semester 3, students participate in mixed-gender modules. The curriculum is designed in accordance with the recommendations of the German Informatics Society, with no particular adjustments for women , other than a hardware module in the first year. After completing mandatory foundation courses, students can choose from a list of modules to attend, ensuring they achieve a certain amount of credits at the end.

The full course is 7 semesters long. Most modules are taught through German with some through English in later semesters. A mandatory semester is spent abroad in one of the partner universities – to choose from over 300 international cooperations. Most students of the program reported on the importance of participating in the international component of the course.

This program has an option for students to be employed with one of the industry partners in internships from early on. “Dual” students prepare their bachelor’s thesis in cooperation with industry. This course has been successfully attracting women since the year 2000. This course is listed here.

Introductory Computing Course Green

Harvey Mudd College, USA

Undergraduate students

The interdisciplinary aspect was integrated into an introductory module called Green, designed to attract students with computing experience and to demonstrate the relevance of computing with biology. It uses biology context in all of its teaching and delivery is shared between the computing and the biology departments. The class is offered over a semester of 15 weeks, and each week either a lecturer from computing or the biology department teaches students.

This module is a requirement for students who want to complete the computer science core component of their major. A full list of modules and assignments in Green is available here.

Harvey Mudd has been successful in the recruitment of women into its computing majors, consistently reaching 40% of female student share in recent years.

Computer Science and Business Administration (women only) – Informatik und Wirtschaft

HTW Berlin, Germany

Undergraduate female students

A female-only bachelor’s degree course that takes 6 semesters to completethe standard timeframe for German higher educational institutions. Although the name suggests a strong emphasis on economics/business administration, over 80% of the curriculum is computing-related.

There is a mandatory internship in semester 4 for all students. A strong practical orientation is a focus in this course.

This course has shown great success in attracting women each year, mainly due to its monoeducational nature (see action on female-only courses) and the practical aspect of the course, but its interdisciplinary component should not be undervalued.

There might be many more success stories that have not been published in academic locations. If you represent one of the institutions with a hybrid computing course that has an impact on female students and students from other underrepresented gender groups, please get in touch [link].

Evaluation Approach

Below are some examples of how hybrid computing courses were assessed for impact:

➤ Tracking Numbers

➤ Questionnaire – Influences

➤ Questionnaire – Motivations

Next Actions to Consider

Consider using this action along with some others, such as Female-Only Third Level Computing Courses.