Co-designing a framework for a persuasive educational technology tool for motivating female students for enrolment into Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics disciplines

Abstract

Goal five of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals calls for increased female participation in socioeconomic growth and development. Achieving this goal requires promoting females’ participation in fields such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) which facing a dire shortage of personnel. However, existing efforts to increase female participation in STEM professions in Nigeria are limited in two ways: firstly, they are not focused on young females between the ages of 11 and 18. Secondly, most existing studies are not focused on the affective aspect of learning. Given the claims in existing literature that females’ disinterest in STEM professions is affective rather than cognitive, this article employs the attitude-change approach, also known as the persuasion approach, to motivate females to pursue STEM pathways. We conducted an empirical study among young female students, STEM teachers and STEM professionals from Nigeria. Based on the empirical study, a framework indicating the key components that educational technology designers should consider when developing technologies to motivate young females in Nigeria to pursue STEM professions is presented.

Transdisciplinary contribution: This study is unique in that it combines strategies from various fields. The framework’s persuasive strategies are drawn from the field of psychology, the innovative pedagogies are drawn from the field of education and the design science research approach is drawn from the field of information systems. This implies that increasing female participation in socioeconomic growth requires transdisciplinary research. This also has implications for how other United Nations Sustainable Development Goals can be met through transdisciplinary research.