A team of academics have created an online educational resource “ENTERPRISE + STEM” to help girls imagine their potential futures through educational materials and showcasing talented women who have turned their passion for STEM into enterprising careers.
Associate Professor Naomi Birdthistle from the Department of Business Strategy and Innovation, Griffith University, along with colleagues, Associate Professor Therese Keane (Swinburne University), Dr Bronwyn Eager (UTAS) and Dr Tanya Linden (UTAS), has recently completed the year-long research project funded by the Invergowrie Foundation in Melbourne, Victoria.
The aim of the project was to tackle the issue of under-participation and under-representation of females in the Australian STEM sector.
To achieve this, the project team created a series of educational resources for teachers in high schools in Victoria. In addition, a knowledge-based train-the-trainer course for teachers, focused on resource delivery in the classroom, was given to over 30 teachers in urban and rural Victoria.
The project team also created a series of case studies featuring women who’ve combined their STEM backgrounds with enterprise skills to realise their dreams, and hopefully inspire students to do the same.
Among these, Kim Ellis who is a space lawyer and Astronaut candidate who is working with NASA to deliver educational programs and Lina Qasem who established ROBOFUN to inspire the next generation of girls to learn how to code and to develop a love of robotics.
The online repository of case studies, lesson plans and videos can be viewed at the Enterprise+STEM website.
