Department Presentation on Grace Hopper Conference 2008

5. For Better or For Worse: Is What We Are Doing Right? Jennifer Wong Department of Computer Science Univeristy of Victoria jwong@cs.uvic.ca INTRODUCTION WHY? Many initiatives have risen in response to an enrolment Motivations decrease in Computer Science. However, many questions and challenges still remain unresolved. Initiatives have been designing and deploying activities and pedagogy, but how do Enrolment Mathematics, Computer & Information Science we know we are actually recruiting and retaining instead of dejecting students? This poster will address various issues Female Male and attempt to answer some of these issues and challenges. 40,000 30,000 WHEN? 20,000 10,000 1999 2000 Related Work 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 0 [4] Scratch Puzzle Piece “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the Lego Blocks Normal Java first four sharpening the axe.” - Abraham Lincoln VS [2] HOW? Design of Study Java VS Python [1] Because there are multiple variables that can contribute to the issues at hand, we need to eliminate variables to look at each time. Case Studies Variables Hypotheses Control Experiments Seniors See Control Mix-Method Approach [5] learning Age “WHO?” Experiment new skills section 1 Children Control learning CS Gender Hypothesis WHO? Experiment concepts 2 2 (boys&girls) Control Pilot Study: Variable Age Children learning CS Self Efficacy Hypothesis 3 Experiment 3 concepts (boys only) 2 case study scenarios: Comfort Level Control Children Hypothesis Experiment Children learning Computer Science concepts (Environment) 4 4 Result learning CS Seniors learning how to use the Internet (details in [3]) concepts (girls only) Control Qualitative Findings: Role Models Hypothesis Experiment Children Seniors 5 5 Attention More More Concepts vs Control Reassurance Less More Hypothesis Experiment Examples 6 Willingness to More Less 6 Explorer Control Case Study m Learning Hypothesis Outcome hypothesis: Experiment Style 7 7 While the traditional form of teaching may attract the older group, the additional “fun” component may be more appealing to the younger group. WHERE? References [1]! Z. Dodds, R. libeskind-Hadas, C. Alvarado, and G. Kuenning. Evaluating a breadth-first cs 1 for scientists. WHAT? SIGCSE Bull., 40(1):266-270, March 2008. [2]! T. M. Rao and S. Mitra. An early software engineering approach to teaching cs1, cs2 and ai. SIGCSE Bull., 40(1):143-147, March 2008. The Next Step [3]! L. Malka, W. Shenkenfelder, D. Sprague, J. Wong, E. Soroush, S. Marczak, and A. Hamidi. Teaching Senior Citizens to Use the Internet: A Student Engagement. In Proceedings of the 13th Annual Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education (WCCCE) Conference, May 2008. [4]! University enrolment, pages 5-9, October 2005. Part of the initiative should be dedicated to evaluation [5]! J. Wong, A. Walker, U. Stege, Y. Coady, A. Agah-St. Pierre, and C. Gibbs. Workshop on evaluating impact and More pilot case studies to look at other variables identifying measures of success: when are outreach initiatives successful? In CCWESTT ’08: Proceedings of the 12th Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades, and Technology conference, Guelph, Ontario, Canada, May 2008.

6. Mary Lou Jepsen Fran Allen New Connections Dean Maria Klawe Anne Condon

7. Ideas & Information

8. Funding & Collaboration

9. Bringing 1st & 2nd year (Grad & Undergrad) Female Students

10. Bringing 1st & 2nd year (Grad & Undergrad) Female Students

11. Bringing 1st & 2nd year (Grad & Undergrad) Female Students

12. Bringing 1st & 2nd year (Grad & Undergrad) Female Students

13. Bringing 1st & 2nd year (Grad & Undergrad) Female Students

14. Department Beneﬁts

15. Department Beneﬁts

16. Department Beneﬁts

17. Industry Participation