GenTLE - Gender Smart Learning Techniques - Design of gender sensitive learning concepts for technical contents

Women are still underrepresented in technical professions. Research suggests that women and men benefit differently from teaching methods and media. Mixed-Reality (MR) technologies open up new possibilities for presenting teaching content and contexts virtually and interactively and creating teaching situations that would otherwise only be possible with great effort (e.g. travel). The aim of the project is to research the potential of MR Learning for technical training under the aspect of equal opportunities and to try out new teaching concepts in this area in a gender-appropriate manner. Aviation is used as an application domain, as it combines many technical subjects and is strongly male-dominated (less than 6% of the world's pilot population are female). Results are examined with regard to transferability to other technical domains in order to enable utilization on a broad application basis. The goals of the project and the work content derived from them are therefore: - Elaboration of an extensive empirical database on potentials in the area of theoretical communication of technical content and its application in practical situations. This survey particularly addresses the social context of the participants in order to be able to create a comprehensive and differentiated picture, especially with regard to the gender dimension. - Creation of a framework for the quantitative evaluation of the quality of software applications in terms of gender sensitivity and sustainability (maintainability, future security, etc.). This framework is used by software development and training organizations to determine quality. - Implementation of a mixed reality application as a proof of concept for a selected use case and conduction of an extensive laboratory study to evaluate the potential of this application, particularly with regard to gender sensitivity and sustainability. The results of the planned studies and the developed framework serve as a basis for deriving practical recommendations for action and guidelines for training and software development organizations in order to promote a future gender-appropriate and sustainable design of knowledge transfer and application training.