Doing E-Learning/Doing Gender?Examining the Relationship between Students' Gender Concepts and E-learning Technology

This paper is an interim report on our research project “The Arduous Gender”. In our project we examine the social construction of gender in relationship to ICT and e-learning in particular. While there have been studies examining the existence of quantitative gender differences in e-learning, the construction of gender in this field has remained empirically unexamined. Therefore, our basic research question is, whether students use e-learning to do gender and if so, which gender concepts are prevalent. With the help of quantitative and qualitative interviews we have examined various aspects of students' e-learning and ICT usage, their attitudes and their personal positioning toward these media. Our results so far are twofold. In our sample we could not recognize significant gender differences concerning the use and the acceptance of e-learning. For both female and male students e-learning and ICT have become an integral part of their everyday lives. Yet stereotypical gender concepts and dichotomies are an important factor when talking about personal competences and skills. Apparently, students' gender concepts have only minor effects on their actual engagement with e-learning and ICT but significant ones on the self-assessment of their skills and their competences with respect to e-learning and ICT. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Germany License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-ncnd/3.0/de.