Hello, everyone. I'm happy to be here today to talk about the topic of educational neuroscience for diversity in stem fields. My name is Doctor Lauren Goodwin.I spent the past few years studying specifically this topic and then spent approximately 20 years in the technology domain and I'm really happy to be here today. So for our discussion, we're gonna first focus on a few basic questions and then look at the opportunity that we have before us. The first is, where's the diversity? Where's the diversity still today in the fields of technology and other stem fields? And what really is the root cause of, of this problem uh that continues to persist around the globe. And then more importantly, what's the opportunity to change it? So let's dive in the first question. I asked myself when I was looking into this, why is why are we continuing to struggle with diversity in stem fields? We know that increasing the presence of women in stem fields will allow them to solve some of the greatest problems that we have um from climate change to health care issues to um economic disparagement across the globe. It is important to ensure that women have representation.

We know from examples that this forum, women in tech have shared with all of us that even things like airbags and testing could have prevented deaths in women and Children. And then voice recognition technology or A I is really tailored largely uh towards men and making sure we have women in the fields to ensure that they have representation for the solutions that are coming out from these new advancements in technology or even equipment like like airbags in our vehicles.

It's important that we have entrance in a representation from women. Also, there's an area of pay disparagement. Um Pay equity is a topic that has been discussed in this in this field. And I wanted to focus there on making sure that the lack of women, even if there are women coming into the field, there is pay disparagement across um this the stem fields that we're seeing today. So having and really looking and evaluating this is important from various areas to making sure that we have the best solutions and then also making sure that we have pay equity in all of the fields. What really do the numbers say, what is the focus and what is the representation of women in all stem fields in particular technology. And you can see here that in engineering, architecture, math, mathematics and computer science, we really have lower representation than some of the other stem fields.

The number of women in stem fields is increasing, but there continues to be a disparity in gender, particularly at the higher levels of these professions in school, both girls and boys enroll in math and science courses equally. And our comparable numbers of girls and boys are prepared to pursue science and engineering when they go off if they go off to college. However few women choose to pursue these majors among first generation college students like myself, women express less intent than men to major in stem fields by graduation. Men significantly outnumber women in nearly all science and engineering disciplines in fields like physics, engineering and computer science.

The gap is particularly wide as seen in the chart here and women earning only about 20% of bachelor's degrees. This under representation of women persists in graduate programs and continues as they enter into the workforce. So what can we do to solve it? What really is the root cause of all of this, all of the statistics that I'm sharing with you today? And I looked at some of the root root causes. I evaluated many different areas. Um And I thought about what does the brain, what what does the brain have to do with diversity and the tie really is learning. So the numbers that I just shared was specific to education and what women are entering or remaining in stem fields. And so I thought about there's probably a tie here between how we are learning and whether or not, we are allowing or enabling women and young girls to thrive in these stem fields. Starting way back to when they started to learn and grow a potential interest in this area. So I looked even further, I was onto something I looked further into the field of neuroscience and I promise you, I'm not going to get into a biology lesson with, with the diagram that I'm showing here, but I wanted to make sure that I represent um represent this because what I found in the Neuroscience of the brain and how it works and how it operates is there's some myths out there.

So I'll pause and I'll just ask everyone uh joining today. What exactly is your learning style? Are you a visual learner or have you been told you're an auditory learner? So I just want to pause and allow you to reflect to, to understand what type of learner you are. All right. Well, hopefully, um this is something new new that I'm sharing today. Findings in the research that I did discovered that learning styles are actually a myth. They're not real. The best way for all of us to learn. And the way the brain was biologically designed to learn is actually through all lobes. So all aspects of these brains, again, we're not gonna get into a biology lesson by stimulating all lobes of the brain. So, visual auditory sensory is really the way that we all were designed to learn. So the answer is really, we're all learning styles, we, we are all learning styles to learn all fields, whether stem or or otherwise or arts and arts as well. It's best to learn it um by triggering all lobes of the brain as represented here. So what then and where and how could we do something about this? As a technologist myself, I looked into technology's role and how we can use technology to understand the brain and then apply it back into the the field of education. And think about how can we redesign learning.

So rather than continuing to talk about the problem, I wanted to do something about it. I reframe the problem being diversity in stem fields, particularly for women. I reframe the problem to consider the role technology can play in the way the brain learns to determine if teaching stem fields core, if we are all teaching stem fields correctly, which led to the discovery of the field of educational neuroscience. Educational neuroscience is defined as the interdisciplinary field of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, data science and technology to drive the learning design and teaching practices for student learning in a virtual or classroom environment. I continue based on all of this research to reimagine the education ecosystem.

When I learned about this new and emerging field, my work extended to leverage A I to be able to map the neural patterns in our brain faster in a learning setting to understand if we can personalize learning faster to make sure that there are trigger points to help the teacher as well as the students.

Make sure that the experience in the classroom or outside is most optimally designed for students to learn best are students board? What is the neural trigger for that? How can we start to tailor our learning or provide supplemental learning when we find that neural mark marker or emotional response of of boredom to make sure that we can enhance them. And this is just a minor example of some of the areas that the field of educational neuroscience can start to chip away at making sure we can all learn stem fields or really any fields better. Some of my other findings I wanted to make sure that I share with you all is um the age. Uh There's also another myth here that age is at a certain point, you reach an age where you can no longer learn new skills. And the research that I did also proved and many others have proven that the plasticity of the brain actually allows us to learn school, learn new skills regardless of your age. So whether you're two or 100 and two, the skills um particularly for stem for this topic can be learned.

So it's important to make sure that this is understood whether you're in a workplace setting and you're learning new skills or if you're in education yourself, the plasticity of the brain allows you to constantly be growing, constantly be evolving new skills. One area where there's a significant gender difference exists in spatial skills with boys and men generally performing better than girls and women. These skills are often considered crucial for skills such as or fields such as engineering and science. But the research says that an individual spatial skills can undergo remarkable improvement in the really, really condensed amount of time through targeted training programs. So what does this really mean when we're providing girls and women with an environment that fosters their success in science and math, we would just need to include spatial skills training. This will boost their confidence, boost their skills and encourage them to stay in the fields, continue to learn it to learn and hopefully enter the workforce and I couldn't go. Um And, and, and this, this, this presentation without making sure that I focus women pioneers in this field, particularly around growth mindset. Growth mindset is something that also is really critical to understand the way the brain responds to a learning environment largely.

Um speaking to the emotional response in your body, when you have the ability to believe that you can learn and you can learn new skills. So, based on some of the biological triggers and components I discussed today, Carol Dweck and um Doctor Angela have focused on growth mindset as the capability to also ensure that we can keep women in stem fields. So I wanted to make sure that I focus um and, and draw attention to leaders and research and leaders in this this field. And women that I admire myself. One of the biggest takeaways from the research that I found was from spatial skills to, to plasticity of the brain and age and growth mindset is what does it really look like in everyday life? What, what and how can we apply neuroscience and learning? And that really is through experiential learning, experiential learning. As seen in the photos here is hands on learning through robotics or in sustainable farming as you see down in the lower lower screen conducted by Dartmouth University. And that's really the way the brain will learn best, not just through a visual experience or through an auditory experience.

So the more we can adapt our programs in K through 12 higher education graduate level as well as in our workplaces and in our communities, the better we will enhance and promote and ensure that women can stay in stem fields and have the most optimal experience when it comes to learning the the domains of engineering, robotics and computer science.

So what then in conclusion, am I promoting today uh rather than call the field educational neuroscience, I have deemed the term term educational neurotechnology in my research. Why I wanna focus on technology and for the purpose of this conference? And women in tech is making sure that technology can serve as a bridge to offer interdisciplinary research and interdisciplinary interdisciplinary application to solve some of the world's most difficult problems. Educational neurotechnology is focusing on how we can enhance the education system and enhance learning experience and design.

By understanding the way the brain works, designing and tailoring learning in any setting with the use of technology to make sure that we adjust based on triggers that are found from the the neural patterns in the brain. And then we can go apply and advance and and enhance um the experience of all students and again, all students of all age. So in conclusion with the the advancements in neuroimaging eeg devices and even neurotechnology, some of the um eg devices I shared previously in the in the screen coupled with A I and other predictive um analytics and artificial intelligence. We are at the cusp of unlocking the relationship of the brain's neural patterns to instructional design and pedagogy. The interaction of the brain systems within certain environments in with certain exposure has led to revelations on how to treat and improve these systems and functions in our bodies.

Just like the science of the brain's learning systems have been revealed in the field of educational neuroscience education can apply treatment plans to optimize the student's learning. In the same way, medicine optimizes health. It is my hope this may ensure young girls and women are not off boarded from the education system or even made to feel that they cannot learn any domain and become anything they dream. It's been a pleasure to be here today. Thank you for attending. And I'm happy to take any questions. OK. It looks like I do have a, a question from the chat that says at what age do young people or teens typically establish more or system systemic beliefs stem loses young women around the teen years for various reasons and modifying culture can become challenging. My, my research didn't focus specifically on that. So um it is a component. Um There's this is the emotional aspects that, that have a cognitive effect on our brain. There's also aspects of trauma that psychologists evaluate on um the development of the brain as well. So um these are all external factors that do affect the uh the the development of the brain and the ability to learn. And one of the things that um is in most of the research is something called cognitive load.

And if you're in an environment where you have experienced trauma, a student, perhaps as a teen as the question indicates, um or young people or you're in an environment where there is bullying or negative emotion, physical abuse. Um certainly, that does have a negative effect on that cognitive load and your capacity to learn. So you always want to keep everything in balance um across all lobes of the brain. If anything is out of balance, your cognitive load is not optimized to be able to learn effectively. But once we find and understand those effects and we can understand what is occurring in the brain, we can start to adjust and tailor to focus more on auditory learning or another area. If some aspect of the brain um is too heightened and doesn't have the capacity to learn or even helping just basic um techniques such as breathing to actually reset the brain's capability to learn as well. So there's various techniques that um we are applying in the classroom once we have, if we have a device and we can understand the triggering points um for for the brain and and what is occurring in the classroom. But thank you for your question. I appreciate it.

I see one question. Um If you have one takeaway for us on how to best support women to keep growing in the tech sector, a tech sector based on brain science, what would it be? Um one takeaway best support women. I think there is um uh uh a focus and a pressure in society to have certain degrees and certain certifications and I am in no way deterring the the opportunity to learn. Um I, what I'm suggesting is how we learn and what really is the best way for us to value the learning experience for members of our team or our Children or members of our community. And that really is their experience. So the pressure to um acquire certifications and um be often in, in a, in a lecture based setting is not really the best way for um anyone to learn and then go back and add value to their communities or into their own research or into their workplace. So I think um to answer your question specifically, the best takeaway is be open to hiring people that don't necessarily have all of the degrees and all of the certifications because perhaps they have focused and chosen to leverage their experience um uh growing up and um learning to, to get it in or uh certain roles and then for your own Children or people that you mentor, just make sure that you are advocating for them and putting them into projects that you wouldn't necessarily consider them for in the past to have an experience of having to logic through a scenario or solve a critical problem.

That is the way that they will both, they will most significantly learn and add the most value to your organization. Really great question. Um Another question here as a former middle school teacher now working in tech, as an ID. This was fascinating. OK. OK. Sorry, I thought it was the question. That's great. Thank you for your presentation. What major in university should I choose to study? Neuroscience and education? Uh Educational neuroscience is a relatively new domain. There are some programs at Stanford Columbia, um Syracuse if you want to pursue that specific area. But um the the field is so interdisciplinary that you could tailor and adjust any degree to, well, not any degree, excuse me, many degrees to this field. So my area is computer science, for example, and I learned um I use A I, my focus was leveraging A I to understand and advance the field of neuroscience. So um or you could study cognitive psychology, cognitive psychology is a critical component of the field as well that is approaching the field more from an emotional experience. Um and external factors of the students, learning experiences, uh experience and even learning design.

Uh If you wanted to become an educator or a teacher, uh that all has our relevant fields. If you wanted to specifically study neuroscience and education, I'm happy to share my contact information and understand a little bit more um about what your interest areas are. But the, the discipline and the applicability of neuroscience and education really crossed, you know, crosses uh multiple doma domains. But I would say engineering, um technology and education itself are fields that you could, you could study if you weren't directly pursuing a neuroscience degree specifically. OK. OK.

All right. Well, thank you so much for your question. I, I promised I would make sure and um give my, my details. Uh So if you want to contact me or reach out to me on linkedin or otherwise, I'm very happy to take your questions. I'm passionate about this topic I've spent and we'll continue to spend my life's work um bringing this into all sectors. And if I can help any of you understand the field more or understand how you can bring it back into your, into your schools and into your workplace. As I'm happy to do so. Thank you for joining the session today and for your thoughtful questions.