Does gender matter in online learning

It is generally noted that computing is gendered, with women opting out of IT. Will the impact of online learning change this? Some researchers claim that women are disadvantaged in online courses. Others argue that we need a 'women-friendly cyber-classroom'. Yet our experience is that the women achieve better results than the men; it is loner males that are disadvantaged by distance learning. We argue that online courses need to be people-friendly so that no learners are disadvantaged. Internet and Web Design is a popular first-year introductory course in the Bachelor of Computing Systems degree. Since 1999 it has been taught flexibly. As well as traditional classroom sessions, we offered our students the choice of working remotely. Students could access the self-assessment questions and course notes and exercises in the classroom sessions or off site at any time of day or night. The option of online learning proved to be very popular with the students, particularly those with work and family commitments. Our research uses pre- and post-course questionnaires and focus groups, and includes the assessment results and behaviour of the different demographic groups of students. We considered such issues as student motivation, preferred study methods, personal commitments, access to technology and support methods. We found that our course favours women and older students, who seem to be more motivated, better at communicating online and at scheduling their learning. In contrast, male students and younger participants need the discipline that classroom sessions provide. Interestingly, our course has a larger proportion of female students than the degree programme as a whole. The challenge now perhaps is to encourage loner male 'nerds'1 to succeed online