Department Presentation on Grace Hopper Conference 2008

Keystone, Colorado (October 1-4, 2008)

Grace Hopper Conference 2008

© 2008 Jennifer Wong

Keynotes

Poster Session

Tech Talks

Tech Talks

For Better or For Worse:Is What We Are Doing Right?

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Female Male

EnrolmentMathematics, Computer & Information Science

HOW?Design of Study

Because there are multiple variables that can contribute to the issues at hand, we need to eliminate variables to look at each time.

Jennifer WongDepartment of Computer Science

Univeristy of [email protected]

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

- Abraham Lincoln

INTRODUCTION

Many initiatives have risen in response to an enrolment decrease in Computer Science. However, many questions and challenges still remain unresolved. Initiatives have been designing and deploying activities and pedagogy, but how do we know we are actually recruiting and retaining instead of dejecting students? This poster will address various issues and attempt to answer some of these issues and challenges.

WHY?Motivations

WHERE?References[1]! Z. Dodds, R. libeskind-Hadas, C. Alvarado, and G. Kuenning. Evaluating a breadth-first cs 1 for scientists.

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.[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.[5]! J. Wong, A. Walker, U. Stege, Y. Coady, A. Agah-St. Pierre, and C. Gibbs. Workshop on evaluating impact and

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.

WHEN?Related Work

WHO?Pilot Study: Variable Age

2 case study scenarios: Children learning Computer Science concepts Seniors learning how to use the Internet (details in [3])

Qualitative Findings:Children Seniors

Attention

Reassurance

Willingness to Explorer

More More

Less More

More Less

Outcome hypothesis:

While the traditional form of teaching may attract the older group, the additional “fun” component may be more appealing to the younger group.

WHAT?The Next Step

Part of the initiative should be dedicated to evaluation More pilot case studies to look at other variables

Lego Blocks

Scratch Puzzle Piece

Normal Java

VSJava Python

VS

[1]

[2]

[4]

Result

Case Studies Variables Hypotheses Control Experiments

Age

Gender

Seniors learning new skills

Children learning CS concepts (boys&girls)

Case Study m

Control Experiment

1

Control Experiment

2

Control Experiment

5

Children learning CS concepts (boys only)

Children learning CS concepts (girls only)

Comfort Level (Environment)

Control Experiment

3

Role Models

Concepts vs Examples

Control Experiment

4

Learning Style

Self Efficacy

Hypothesis 2

See “WHO?” section

Hypothesis 3

Hypothesis 4

Hypothesis 5

Hypothesis 6

Hypothesis 7

Control Experiment

6

Control Experiment

7

Mix-Method Approach [5]

New Connections

Maria Klawe

Dean

Mary Lou JepsenFran Allen

Anne Condon

Ideas & Information

Funding & Collaboration

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

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

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

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

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

Department Benefits

Department Benefits

Department Benefits

Industry Participation

University Participation

Sponsor Levels

16,500 8,500 5,000

http://gracehopper.org/2008/forms/sponsor_acad.php

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Be a sponsor

Thank You!