Co-curricular and extracurricular ICT activities, assessment practices, and female students’ interest in ICT-related pathways in Ghana

Across many education systems, expanding access to information and communication technology (ICT) education forms part of national development agendas, yet women remain underrepresented in ICT pathways. Guided by Expectancy-Value Theory and the Leaky Pipeline metaphor, this mixed-methods study examined how co-curricular and extracurricular ICT activities and assessment practices were associated with first-year female students’ interest in ICT-related programmes in higher education. Survey data were collected from 410 female Level 100 students in a public university in Ghana, followed by interviews with 11 participants reflecting retrospectively on their Senior High School ICT experiences. Simple regression analyses showed that both co-curricular and extracurricular ICT activities and assessment practices significantly predicted interest, with assessment practices explaining more variance. In the simultaneous model, however, only assessment practices made a significant unique contribution, while co-curricular and extracurricular ICT activities were not significant. Since the combined model did not explain more variance than the assessment-only model, the results indicate that co-curricular and extracurricular ICT activities added virtually no additional explained variance once assessment practices were included. Qualitative findings indicated that activities beyond the classroom broadened exposure and practical engagement, whereas assessment practices related more directly to students’ sense of competence and perceptions of future possibilities in ICT. The study highlights the need to look beyond access to ICT education and focus on the school experiences through which female students come to view ICT as relevant, achievable, and worth pursuing.