Can, or Should, Online Courses be Developed for Women Only?
Posted on September 4, 2009 by Barbara Macaulay
This subject may be almost too hot to handle, but it is important that we look at some of the more contemporary trends and research in online education, even when the topic can arouse a lot of heated debate on both sides of an issue. So here goes. In this case, I’m talking about a set of private girls’ high schools experimenting with girls-only online classes. The story about this appeared in the Washington Post, written by Michael Birnbaum and carrying the headline: “Md. School Joins Test of Online Courses Tailored to Girls.”
I know there are a lot of strong opinions from some who advocate for boys only and girls only classrooms. And the article confirms that there’s more of this going on in K-12 schools across the country than ever before. It says this: In 2002, just 11 public schools across the country offered single-sex classrooms, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. Now they number more than 500.
If you have a strong opinion about the benefits or deficits of single-sex classrooms or, more to the point of this blog, single-sex-optimized online courses, you’re welcome to share your views here. But I have two other principal interests in this piece. One relates to this quote in the story:
“There’s been a lot of research done on how girls learn differently with technology than boys,” said Brad Rathgeber, Holton-Arms’s director of technology. “Part of this is a little bit of theory that we’re trying to put in practice to see if it really does play out.”
To that point, I would be much more interested in hearing from online college students – men or women – as well as college professors who teach online and who have an opinion on whether or not women and men learn in different ways using the same technology.
Secondly, I guess my next question is whether or not some technologies are inherently more friendly or favorable to one sex or the other? Or, can the way a technology is implemented make a difference in its acceptance or favorable rating among male and female students? Here’s what one college-level assistance professor had to say about that:
One expert on single-sex education said it might be possible to design an online course in a way that would benefit girls, but she cautioned that she hadn’t found that simply separating the sexes, whether in the classroom or on the Internet, is inherently beneficial… “If they’re in an online environment where they’re going to be doing wikis and blogs, that would serve the girls,” said Frances R. Spielhagen, an assistant professor of education at Mount Saint Mary College in New York. But “the online capability is as good as, and only as good as, the educational experience that the teacher has crafted.”
I happen to know the last part of her view – that the online experience hinges on a well-crafted program – is absolutely true. But your thoughts on these other issues would be very much appreciated.
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I do believe that we all learn differently than our peers because we are all unique individuals whose biology (not just measured in male/female dichotomies) plays a role in how we learn. Our general environment now, our historical experiences, our upbringing and our peers also influence how we learn. Given that all of these factors interconnect and influence one another to ultimately determine how we learn best it’s kinda silly to state that everyone learns in a certain prescribed way.
I personally would be interested to find out how boys use technology differently than girls and why. Is it biological? Is it societal? Is it some combination of both?
I personally am not convinced that single-sex online experiences are beneficial, but then again I am not really well versed with K-12 pedagogy and theory