Wisetales: Sharing personal stories as informal learning experience for women in science and engineering

Women are underrepresented in the areas of science and engineering, both in academia and industry. This leads to weaker support networks, lower self confidence and lesser access to mentors. We investigate whether a community built with a specific purpose to allow women in science and engineering to share personal stories can support women to reflect and learn from each other's experience. This paper presents the design of WISEtales, a new online community for sharing personal stories. It discusses the design and the potential role of the community as an informal learning tool based on results of an exploratory user study.