Women remain underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields despite significant policy attempts to increase the numbers. As the web migrates from desktops and laptops to cellular phones, slowly forming a landscape of pervasive computing, new methods on enticing female students to STEM are heavily sought after. This research presents an analysis of the challenges in attracting female students to STEM, and defines a fun and innovative method to overcome the challenges.

This research produces an Android based mobile solution, Sisters-in-STEM (SIS). The initial version of SIS is a multi-level trivia game in the subject area of computing and IT, and is geared towards fifth grade and up. The purpose of SIS is to engage female students with the subject matter and to measure the level of engagement and progress. SIS gathers analytics that quantify engagement and progression.

In the future, SIS will be used to support experiments to determine the effectiveness of the trivia game approach to engaging female students in computing. Because SIS is data driven, trivia questions on computing can be replaced by questions in any other STEM area.