TECH's efforts for diversity and inclusion among students

Diversity and Inclusion in TECH (DITECH) is an interdepartmental project aimed to create greater diversity among the IT students as well as increase well-being among all the students enrolled to the TECH faculty at Aalborg University.

At DITECH, we work with diversity and inclusion. There isn’t really any reason not to do that. Because a diverse student population and an inclusive student environment means more students and a lower dropout rate.

WHY WE WORK WITH DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

At DITECH, diversity is more than gender. Diversity is different ethnicity, sexuality, place of birth and residence, culture, religion, interests, personality types etc. And of course, gender.

There are three main reasons to work with diversity and inclusion in IT:

1. Employability. There is a shortage of IT specialists – and that shortage will only increase in the following years. In 2030, Denmark alone will be short of up to 22.000 IT specialists, according to a report for Danish High-Schools & IDA (2021).
2. Innovation and creativity. International research show that businesses with great diversity perform up to 35 percent better than those with homogeneous employees, because diversity of thought heightens innovation and creativity. And there is no reason to believe, this does not also apply to diverse students.
3. Democracy. Similar minds think alike. And it is a societal problem if IT solutions are only developed by IT specialists that all have the same preferences, backgrounds etc. Especially because IT is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our society.

From girls to diversity and inclusion (DI)

DITECH started as a recruitment project in 2019. At that time, the project was called More girls in IT and was solely aimed at recruiting more girls for the IT educations at TECH.

The following year, the project developed into a diversity and inclusion (DI) project with diverse recruitment, high well-being and retention among students as it main goals.

THE THREE DITECH BRANCHES

To best support the work with diversity and inclusion, the project has three branches working in its own field:

• Recruitment. In the recruitment branch, we work with inclusive communication and diverse recruitment. We gather knowledge to and spar with communication officers from the TECH institutes and AAU Communication, as well as collaborates with stakeholders, eg. gymnasiums.
• Onboarding. A good onboarding process is pivotal to the retention of students, and that is the focus of this branch. We identify critical elements, share best practices and develop solutions aimed at creating the best possible framework for a successful onboarding.
• Well-being. In this branch, student well-being is on the agenda. With the specific challenges of each TECH institute as a starting point, we join forces to create and test out solutions to increase the well-being of students and move towards an inclusive and healthy student environment.

Read more about each branch in the right menu.

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FURTHER INFORMATION

Want to know more about the project? Feel free to contact:

Ulrik Nyman, Head of Studies at the Department of Computer Science, ulrik@cs.aau.dk

Any questions?