Do male or female students talk more in class at Tulane?

There is an app called Gender Timer that records the number of male and female students that talk during class. I decided to record two sessions of the only class I am enrolled in at Tulane that has about an even ratio of male students to female students; Tulane is majority female (about 60/40) so calculating in my classes that have only two male students would have been inaccurately skewed.

I took two different recordings for more even results

Class 1: 22 students, 10 male and 12 female

Number of times a male student talked: 21

Number of times a female student talked: 16

Class 2: 23 students, 11 male and 12 female

Number of times a male student talked: 18

Number of times a female student talked: 6

The first class was about even between male and female, with only a difference of five. Granted, there are more girls in the class but not a significant amount. However the second class was a difference of two, with male students again outnumbering female students.

So does this mean that male students talk more in class than female students at Tulane?

I personally don’t think so. This was not by any means a scientific experiment that should be taken seriously. There are many factors that were not accounted for. For instance, certain majors may talk more or certain questions may be more pertinent to one gender.

This app also does not account for particular people talking. As I was recording the numbers, I noticed that several students who happened to be male talked a lot more than any of the other students – both male and female. There was no way to record this on the app, so the results were somewhat misleading. Five people in a class, of any gender, are not indicative of one gender speaking up more than the other.

All that being said, it was interesting to open my eyes (and ears) to the dynamic in my class and I encourage others to download this (free) app and do the same. You might end up learning something about your class and school.