FOSTWOM Project – Fostering Women to STEM MOOCs intends to use the inclusive potential of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to propose STEM subjects free of stereotyping assumptions on gender abilities. The consortium is interested in attracting girls and raise the number of young women that pursue careers in science and technology.

The priority actions in which the project aims are:
– Develop a TOOLKIT to design, produce and validate STEM MOOCs under a gender balance perspective, considering the results of a needs diagnosis on STEM barriers implemented with secondary schools and higher education institutions and of a map of strategies for inclusive digital learning;
– Create one collaborative and graduate STEM MOOC, taking into account the main expertise of each partner’s teams; one bridging STEM MOOC, namely designed for secondary and undergraduate students and teachers; and one transversal MOOC aiming to analyze existing STEM MOOCs through a gender balance perspective;
– Promote intensive training sessions to secondary and tertiary education teachers and technical staffs regarding the design and production of gender inclusive STEM MOOCs and their implementation in face-to-face classes (e.g. flipped-classroom strategies).
With these concrete actions, it is expected that the FOSTWOM achieve its two main goals, which are: to mitigate the effects of stereotyping about gender-based STEM ability and, consequently, raise the number of female students and learners attending courses in the areas of STEM, both, as enrolled students in higher education institutions, and as STEM MOOCs’ participants.

FOSTWOM PARTNERS: Universitat Politècnica de València – Spain, Conservatoire National Des Arts et Métiers – France, METID Politecnico di Milano – Italy), a KTH Royal Institute of Technology – Sweden, Colégio Amor de Deus – Portugal, I.I.S Benedetto Castelli – Italy and Técnico (ULisboa) – Portugal.

IST Team: Ana Moura Santos, Pedro Marcelino (colaborador), Telma Baptista, Pavle Arandjelovic, Joana Bordalo, Susana Santana

Project Website: https://fostwom.eu

More information: projects.nri@tecnico.ulisboa.pt (please refer FOSTWOM in the subject)