Katherine Hiley
ABSTRACT
The role of non-formal education in increasing female participation in Computer Science (CS) is a hot topic. Short-term interventions, including programming skill outreach activities, have been reported to increase self-efficacy and willingness to pursue computing careers in young women. We explored the impact of a programming outreach activity on three types of measures for 30 female pupils: computing self-efficacy, social participation, and understanding of basic computing concepts. Preliminary results revealed a significant increase in participants' self-efficacy and sense of belonging in computing after the informal learning activity. Students were more focused on tasks when engaging socially with their peers and teachers. A decrease in misconception was observed in uni-structural knowledge but no significant difference was found in multi-structural computing knowledge acquisition. These data provide a baseline for study of the long term impact of outreach activities.
- Grace Lawlor, Philip Byrne, and Brendan Tangney. 2020. ?CodePlus"-Measuring Short-Term Efficacy in a Non-Formal, All-Female CS Outreach Programme. ACM Trans. Comput. Educ., Vol. 20, 4, Article 25 (oct 2020), 18 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411510Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Orni Meerbaum-Salant, Michal Armoni, and Mordechai Ben-Ari. 2010. Learning computer science concepts with scratch. In Proceedings of the Sixth international workshop on Computing education research. 69--76.Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- The Impact of Non-Formal Computer Science Outreach on Computational Thinking in Young Women
Recommendations
“CodePlus”—Measuring Short-Term Efficacy in a Non-Formal, All-Female CS Outreach Programme
The provision of all-female computer science outreach programmes is a common strategy used to foster greater interest in the subject for high school aged girls. Based on key factors that affect girls’ interest in computer science (CS), outreach ...
Social Perceptions in Computer Science and Implications for Diverse Students
ICER '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on International Computing Education ResearchThe barriers to diversity in computer science (CS) are complex, consisting of both structural and social barriers. In this paper, we focus on social perceptions for students in grades 7-12 in the U.S. using surveys of nationally representative samples ...
Encouraging Women to Become CS Teachers
GenderIT '15: Proceedings of the Third Conference on GenderITPrevious research suggested a relationship between teachers' and students' attitudes towards a subject area. In order to increase female representation in Computer Science (CS), we need female teachers who have positive attitudes and can provide role ...
Comments