Gender, Communication and Comfort Level in Higher Level Computer Science Education - Case Study

According to research, students fare better in their studies if their comfort level is high. One of the factors in defining comfort level is how comfortable students are in presenting questions to other students and the course faculty. In this study, the students were divided into male, female and mixed groups. The communication within the groups was observed during the training sessions. In addition, the students filled in a survey after each training session, which measured the number of completed exercises and the level of experienced difficulty of the exercises. The study reveals that in the computer science classes typical gender distribution (majority male) lowers the comfort level of all students in comparison to a case with an even gender distribution. In light of this research, the study presents, that both male and female students would benefit, if more women studied computer science