Promotion of young boys and girls in engineering education

The promotion of young boys and girls in engineering education is directly linked to one project in the Cluster of Excellence "Cognition in Technical Systems" (CoTeSys) at the Technische Universität München. In 2009 a project called "LearnING" began at the Technische Universität München. The aim of this project is to trigger the interests of pupils and students towards robotics, cognitive systems and engineering. For this, educational modules were developed and implemented in primary and grammar schools. Essential elements of the whole concept are to consider gender specific aspects in the planning and accomplishment of courses and to design the courses gender equitable to get more girls interested in this field. Boys and girls can experience and exercise themselves in programming and additionally learn a lot of technical knowledge e.g. about cogwheels, drive systems and sensors. Furthermore they will work problem-oriented and acquire essential competencies like concept development and team work, which are necessary for a successful career [1]. With the approach of Problem-Based Learning, gender specific aspects during the implementation of courses in school should be considered and designed gender equitable to get more girls interested in this field. The idea is that students should understand technical systems through other forms of teaching than school lessons, e.g. by experiencing. By now two educational modules were implemented, one in primary school and one in secondary school. Both modules were evaluated; the data is already available.