Online Learning: Are There Really Differences Between Men and Women?
It’s been longer than I am willing to admit, but once upon a time I used to play a lot of video games. In fact, I was really good. I conquered Donkey Kong, glided through Super Mario Brothers, and took on all worthy challengers to a game of Dance, Dance Revolution. But sometime during high school, I stopped playing. Yes, the demands of school work and my part-time job definitely played a part, but I also realized my sisters and many of my girlfriends no longer played.
There is this common misperception that gamers are mostly male. Think Evan from Superbad, Marty McFly from Back to the Future, and of course, the male nerds in The Big Bang Theory. But according to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, about 50% of men and 48% of women ages 18 to 29 play video games. The gender difference is surprisingly not all that different. Yet, out of the same survey, 15% of men identified themselves as “gamers” as opposed to 6% of women.
This got me thinking. Do assumptions and misperceptions about gender differences exist beyond gaming? Take, for example, eLearning. There’s limited literature related to gender differences in online learning, particularly in low- and middle-income settings, but it’s widely assumed that women have less access to online technology than men, and they use it less.
From 2011 to 2015, the Knowledge For Health (K4Health) Project partnered with the Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria (MLSCN) and the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientist of Nigeria (AMLSN) to improve medical laboratory scientists’ knowledge and skills by launching nine eLearning courses on AMLSN’s own eLearning platform. During development, we learned that the regulatory body and professional association of medical laboratory scientists had some initial concerns that this approach wouldn’t effective for all medical laboratory scientists — they assumed that women would be less likely to access online courses. However, during implementation, we found that female MLS earned 52% (8,020) of the 15,461 course certificates earned.
Since this common assumption affects eLearning programmatic approaches, we decided that it was a valuable exercise to see if there are any potential gender differences among our Global Health eLearning Center (GHeL) users.
Methodology and Findings
In February 2016, K4Health surveyed GHeL users to understand overall patterns of engagement as well as variations in engagement by gender. Using Survey Monkey, we sent online surveys to users who had successfully completed any of 20 selected family planning and maternal, newborn, and child health courses. We received 125 responses, a 8.5% response rate.
Given that the most of our learners come from low- and middle-income countries, it was not surprising to see that the the majority of survey respondents are from sub-Saharan Africa. However, it was interesting to note that we had almost twice as many male as female respondents.
When asked to rate reasons for taking GHeL courses by importance, interest in topic yielded the most frequent “very important” rating (94% of females; 82% of males). This was followed by improving job prospects (90% of females; 73% of males) and gaining technical knowledge (92% of females; 65% of males).
Respondents were also asked to choose the top three barriers to participating in continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities from a list of provided answers. The top five reasons among both males and females were cost, time, travel, lack of employer support, and family obligations.
There were some notable variations. For example, while more males (47%) listed lack of support by employer as a top barrier as compared to females (25%), fewer males (10%) listed family obligations than females (25%).
The online survey also asked respondents how they perceive the value of the GHeL courses in terms of the knowledge gained on the subject matter, knowledge application, work relevance, and how it compares to other trainings on FP and MNCH topics. The majority of respondents reported using GHeL content for further study, as well as sharing GHeL resources with clients or colleagues.
What did we learn?
The results of this study are not meant to be reflective of the entire GHeL user base, but only that of learners who have completed courses related to family planning (FP) and maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH). Due to the small sample size, it was not possible to generate statistically significant results from the survey findings. Nonetheless, there were a number of illuminating findings. In terms of continuing professional development, family obligation was a more commonly reported barrier for females than for males; and lack of employer support was more commonly reported by males than by females. These variations are worth exploring further.
The main takeaway for me is that there were more similarities than differences between men and women. For example, the top three reasons both men and women gave for taking courses were interest in topic, desire for technical knowledge, and interest in improving job prospects.
Media culture creates a perception that there’s a gender divide in gaming and other online behavior, but it’s important to test out these assumptions. Otherwise, you may just be perpetuating untested assumptions. The same applies to online learning. When in doubt, test it out!
For more information, view the full infographic, Online Learning User Experience: Is There a Difference Between Male and Female Learners?
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The Exchange is a K4Health publication. The Knowledge for Health (K4Health) Project is supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Population and Reproductive Health, Bureau for Global Health, under Cooperative Agreement #AID-OAA-A-13–00068 with the Johns Hopkins University.
The contents are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the U.S. Government.
