Addressing the gender imbalance in computing

It was a case of students recruiting students. First-year students Jeanienne Wolfe, Sinead Cassidy and Michelle Neary were all attracted to the computer applications course in Senior College Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, because they had visited the college in the previous year and met with students already on the course.

Michelle, who went to school in Sion Hill, says "six of us from the same year came here. Meeting the second-year students was the deciding factor." Sinead, a past pupil of Our Lady's Grove, in Goatstown, Co Dublin, was equally impressed, saying that the college did not make the classic mistake of simply handing out prospectuses or getting lecturers to talk to prospective students.

Always interested in computers, Sinead says of SCD: "I absolutely love it, more than I thought I would." She is especially happy with the design classes. On the downside, she says the college has no sports or recreation facilities and only a small canteen. And the chairs are "hell" on her back as she is tall.

The class is split between the campus where the girls are, in Blackrock, Co Dublin, and the main campus in Dun Laoghaire, which boasts a somewhat larger canteen and library. Sinead's advice to second-level students interested in computing is to "go for it but only if you are very interested and dedicated. You have to be serious and want to learn."

Jeanienne also loves the course, which she says is very practical - including subjects such as web design, web publishing, spreadsheets, databases and word processing. Offered a third-level place in DIT, she had no hesitation in choosing SCD.

In fact, Barry O'Callaghan, director of computing at the Blackrock campus, says the SCD gets more students from the institutes of technology than the ITs get from them. This is somewhat surprising, as the natural progression is from the Post Leaving Cert sector (O'Callaghan says the more appropriate term is "further education") to the ITs with many PLC courses linked to certificates and diplomas. He says graduates of the college who wish to further their education usually do so on a part-time basis, at their employers' expense.

The initiative whereby students teach girls from second-level schools in Dublin and north Wicklow about some aspect of computing, thereby introducing them to the college, has been very successful in addressing gender imbalance. "One of the ideas people have about computing is that you have to be a nerdy, swotty, serious male, so girls tend to think computing is not for them," he explains.

SCD offers a variety of computing courses, with 90 first-year places on its multimedia course, 60 on computer applications and 60 on computer technology. School-leavers interested in these courses are advised to apply early as places fill quickly. There are no fees for PLC courses and students may apply for means-tested maintenance grants. There are also courses at postgraduate level: a teacher training diploma and a conversion diploma in computing for graduates of other disciplines. The fees for these courses, including exams and books, are about £500.

O'Callaghan is concerned that second-level students may not be aware of the computing opportunities on offer in the further education sector. He points to a recent publication by Enterprise Ireland, Guide to careers in computing, which focuses on third-level courses only.

SCD's three PLC computing courses - computer software technology, computer applications and multimedia - are one-year courses with an option of taking an advanced course in second year. Typically students take up employment directly after the two years O'Callaghan says all students have full access to the Internet free of charge. The multimedia course, which had its first graduates this summer, is particularly attractive, he says. Paddy Condon, computer applications course tutor, explains that multimedia uses information technology to bring text, video, graphics and sound together.

O'Callaghan says the computer applications course is for the less techie types and includes "big chunks of multimedia, e-commerce and Visual Basic". The computer technology course is geared towards programming and includes Cobol, Visual Basic and C++.

While the college is well equipped technically, space is at a premium - with the library in the Blackrock building housed under the stairs. In Dun Laoghaire, the college has leased rooms from the former school across the road but the lease is up in June and the college must find alternative accommodation for the 200 students.

Principal Jack Griffin says the college has been offered the old town hall next to the Blackrock building (itself the old municipal trades school) but they must retain the Carnegie library, the facade and the old council chamber. The college has the support of the local commercial and residential communities, who feel that the use of the town hall as a college would not add significantly to traffic problems, as the majority of students would use the DART or cycle, according to Griffin.

The cost to the Department of Education is estimated at more than £2 million, exceeding the cost norms. "If we had a greenfield site, they would build us a college, but there is no such site in the area," he says ruefully. At present, SCD has 830 students doing a range of PLC courses from accounting to auctioneering to estate agency to business, marketing, hair and beauty therapy and, of course, computing.

These students are housed on space totalling 2,790 square metres, says Griffin, which is far below the recommended seven square metres per student.