Computing Educational Activities Involving People Rather Than Things Appeal More to Women (CS1 Appeal Perspective)

Abstract

Prior research on recruitment of women to computing has established that computing tasks involving People rather than Things have been perceived as much more appealing by female high-school students (potentially recruitable as university computing students). This paper changes the focus from prospective to current university students and presents the results of a new experiment that advances and moves beyond earlier research in two crucial respects. First of all, the participants of the experiment are N=152 university students, who already study computing, rather than general highschool students. Second of all, the choice between a People-themed versus an isomorphic Things-themed version of an educational task now pertains to real (in fact, mandatory) assignments that the students had to perform, rather than hypothetical tasks. The change of experimental context, design, and methodology allows us to complement previous findings related to recruitment with suggestions significant for computing educational activities. The overall findings of the new experiment are consistent with that of the previous one. We find that, also at university, there is a visible preference for choosing People themed over Things themed computing tasks amongst women. The results also expose considerable variation between tasks in the effect of gender observed. At the same time, male students, in general, seem to be either indifferent to the themes or to slightly prefer People versions. This suggests that educators should consider favoring People themed assignments over ones involving Things.

Gender Disparities in AP Computer Science Exams: Analysis of Trends in Participation and top Achievement

“…Looking into the commonalities in these programs, the availability of mentors who were near-peer role models along with increased attention to equity, diversity, and inclusion made a difference (Cummings et al, 2021; Ericson & McKlin, 2012; 2018; Ericson et al, 2016). Additionally, introduction to computing through culturally and socially relevant programs, implementing inclusive pedagogy, and incorporating socially meaningful activities into the courses might have led girls to higher achievement in AP CS programs (Boda & McGee, 2021; Christensen et al, 2021; Ericson & McKlin, 2018; Goode & Chapman, 2011; Marcher et al, 2021; Margolis et al, 2008).…”

“…In particular, the addition of the AP CS Principles course has accelerated the period to reach parity in participation and top achievement. This implies that a people-oriented, socially meaningful, culturally relevant, and responsive computing curricula that cover a broader range of computing topics that are designed to encourage females to participate in CS education would definitely make a difference (Christensen et al, 2021;Marcher et al, 2021). On a parallel track, many experts in the field of CS education advocated for altering the programming language in AP CS A from Java to Python and incorporating topics more appealing to girls, such as data science, as Barbara Ericson and Barbara Liskow discussed during their keynote talk at the SIGCSE 2022 event.…”

Digital Education For All: Multi-University Study of Increasing Competent Student Admissions at Scale

“…One approach would be reaching these demographics through interviewbased research. As concrete changes, we could inspect the content of our course materials -for example, a recent study [13] noted that women tend to show more interest in problems that are expressed through real-life issues. High school cooperation and a related intake mechanism could also provide some assistance in reaching underrepresented groups earlier and more directly.…”

Creating a motivating environment in a programming course using a two-track exercise split

“…The high percentage of female students on the course in general (45 % is considered high within computer science classes) can also be explained by a preselection, in that people already consider the elective a CSX-like course (Cohoon & Tychonievich, 2011) since the course description was written carefully with inclusive language. In addition, other issues such as topic selection have an effect (Marcher et al, 2021): I included more business-related topics and fewer topics focusing on unrelated or abstract examples, and the gender of the main teacher (female) may also have had an effect.…”