Computing fields are foundational to most STEM disciplines and the only STEM discipline to show a consistent decline in women's representation since 1990, making it an important field for STEM educators to study. The explanation for the underrepresentation of women and girls in computing is twofold: a sense that they do not fit within the stereotypes associated with computing and a lack of access to computer games and technologies beginning at an early age (Richard, 2016).
Informal coding education programs are uniquely situated to counter these hurdles because they can offer additional
Overlaying Computer Science (CS) courses on top of inequitable schooling systems will not move us toward “CS for All.” This paper prioritizes the perspectives of minoritized students enrolled in high school CS classrooms across a large, urban school district in the Western United States, to help inform how CS can truly be for all.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jean RyooTiera TanksleyCynthia EstradaJane Margolis
This award takes an innovative approach to an ongoing, pervasive, and persistent societal issue: women are still drastically underrepresented in computing careers. This project targets middle school-aged girls because it is a time when many of them lose interest and confidence in pursuing technical education and computing careers. This project will design, develop, and deploy a one-week experience focused on middle school girls that targets this issue with a novel combination of teaching techniques and technology. The project will use wearable computing devices to support girls' social interactions as they learn computing and solve technical challenges together. The goals of the project are to raise interest, perceived competence, and involvement in the computational ability of girls. Additionally, the project aims to increase a sense of computational community for girls that makes pursuing computational skills more relevant to their identities and lives, and that helps continued participation in computing. The project will deploy a one-week experience four times per year with a socioeconomically diverse range of campers. The project will also develop a 'program in a box' kit that can be broadly used by others wishing to deliver a similar experience for girls.
The planned research will determine if a one-week experience that uses social wearable construction in the context of live-action role play can use the mediating process of computational community formation to positively impact middle school girls' engagement with and interest in computation. Computational community is defined as girls engaging together in the process of learning computation, trading resources and knowledge, and supporting growth. Research participants will include 100 6th to 9th-grade girls. At least 75% of the participants will be either low income, first-generation college-bound, or underrepresented in higher education. Students will be recruited through the longstanding partnerships with title one schools in the Salinas Valley, the Educational Partnership Center, and in the Pajaro Valley Unified School district, where 82% of the students are Hispanic/Latinx, 42% are English Learners, and 73% are eligible for free or reduced lunch. The research questions are: 1) Does the proposed experience increase girls' self-reported competence, self-efficacy, and interest in computational skills and careers? and 2) Will the proposed experience lead to activity-based evidence of learning and integration of computational skills at the group social level? The project will use a mixed-methods, design-based research approach which is an iterative design process to rapidly collect and analyze data, and regularly discuss the implications for practice with the design team. Data will be collected using observations, interviews, focus groups, surveys, and staff logs. Quantitative data will be analyzed using frequencies, means, and measures of dispersion will be applied to survey data from both time points. Pearson correlation coefficients will be used to describe the bivariate relationship between continuous factors. ANOVAs will assess whether there are significant differences in continuous measures across groups. Qualitative data will be analyzed using a constant comparison method.
This Innovations in Development award is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
We found that the learners seeking out resources to teach themselves to code were generally college educated women who were motived either by the desire to be able to read and understand the code written by hired developers or the desire to become developers themselves. The importance of a female-focused learning setting was mixed; while most women acknowledged a more comfortable atmosphere created by such a setting, very few cited that as a primary reason for joining the group.
All learner participants in this study persisted through the ten weeks of the Women’s Coaching and Learning
In 2016, ETR received a National Science Foundation grant to study, under Principal Investigator Louise Ann (“Lou Ann”) Lyon, PhD, a newly formed, real-world organization dedicated to helping women in the workforce learn to write computer code. This project formed a partnership between a research team with experience in computer science (CS) education and learning sciences research and a newly fashioned practitioner team focused on building a grassroots, informal, volunteer group created to help women help themselves and others learn to write computer code. This research-practitioner
This project tackles the urgent needs of the nation to engage people of all ages in computational thinking and help them learn basic computer science concepts with a unique and innovative approach of structured in-game computer program coding. Researchers will explore the design and development of a 3D puzzle-based game, called May's Journey, in which players solve an environmental maze by using the game's pseudo code to manipulate game objects. The game is designed to teach introductory but foundational concepts of computer programming including abstraction, modularity, reusability, and debugging by focusing players on logic and concepts while asking them to type simple instructions in a simplified programming language designed for novices. The game design in this project differs from today's block-based programming learning approaches that are often too far from actual computer code, and also differs from professional programming languages which are too complex for novices. The game and its embedded programming language learning are designed to be responsive to the progress of the learner throughout the game, transitioning from pseudo code to the embedded programming language itself. Error messages for debugging are also designed to be adaptive to players' behavior in the game. Using extensive log data collected from people playing the game, researchers can study how people learn computer programming. Such knowledge can advance understanding of the learning processes in computer programming education. Additionally, this work emphasizes the use of games as informal learning environments as they are accessible and fun, drawing attention and retention of many learners of different age groups with the potential to change attitudes towards computer programming across different populations. This project is co-funded by the STEM + Computing (STEM+C) program that supports research and development to understand the integration of computing and computational thinking in STEM learning, and the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program that funds innovative research, approaches and resources for use in a variety of settings with its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments.
The project's formative and summative evaluation methods, including surveys, expert reviews of learners' computer code developed in the game, and interviews, are used to gauge learners' engagement as well as learning. In exploring learning, researchers aim to understand how players build implicit computer science knowledge through gameplay and how that gameplay relates to their performance on external transfer tasks. The project will answer the following three research questions: (1) Can observers reliably detect and label patterns of gameplay that provide evidence of learning or misconceptions regarding the four computer science constructs - abstraction, modularity, debugging and semantics - that learners exhibit playing May's Journey? (2) How does learner's implicit knowledge of these computer science constructs change over time and do those patterns vary by gender and prior programming experiences? (3) Is there a strong correlation between implicit learning measures and transfer of CS concepts: modularity, debugging, semantics, and abstraction? How do these correlations vary across elements of the game? This work will result in several outcomes: game design metaphors tested for their learning and engagement value that can be abstracted and embedded in different games. This project will also contribute patterns and an understanding of how people learn and engage in problem solving using concepts of abstraction, modularity, debugging and semantics. These outcomes will lead to advancement in knowledge in the learning sciences as well as the design of educational games that enrich STEM learning, particularly in programming and computational thinking. In addition, this project will engage female participants and underserved populations through partnering organizations including National Girls Collaborative project.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
This Research in Service to Practice project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
The project will research the educational impact of social robots in informal learning environments, with applications to how social robots can improve participation and engagement of middle-school girls in out-of-school computer science programs in under-resourced rural and urban areas. The use of robots to improve STEM outcomes has focused on having learners program robots as tools to accomplish tasks (e.g., play soccer). An alternate approach views robots as social actors that can respond intelligently to users. By designing a programmable robot with social characteristics, the project aims to create a culturally-responsive curriculum for Latina, African American, and Native American girls who have been excluded by approaches that separate technical skill and social interaction. The knowledge produced by this project related to the use and benefits of social programmable robots has the potential to impact the many after-school and weekend programs that attempt to engage learners in STEM ideas using programmable robot curricula.
The project robot, named Cozmo, will be programmed using a visual programming language and will convey emotion with facial expressions, sounds, and movements. Middle school girls will engage in programming activities, collaborative reflection, and interact with college women mentors trained to facilitate the course. The project will investigate whether the socially expressive Cozmo improves computer science outcomes such as attitudes, self-efficacy, and knowledge among the middle school female participants differently than the non-social version. The project will also investigate whether adding rapport-building dialogue to Cozmo enhances these outcomes (e.g., when a learner succeeds in getting Cozmo to move, Cozmo can celebrate, saying "I can move! You're amazing!"). These questions will be examined research conducted with participants in multi-session after-school courses facilitated by Girl Scout troops in Arizona. The project will disseminate project research and resources widely by sharing research findings in educational and learning science journals; creating a website with open source code for programming social robots; and making project curriculum and related guidelines available to Girl Scouts and other educational programs.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Women continue to be underrepresented in computer science professions. In 2015, while 57% of professional occupations in the U.S. were held by women, only 25% of computing occupations were held by women. Furthermore, the share of computer science degrees going to women is smaller than any STEM field, even though technology careers are the most promising in terms of salaries and future growth. Research suggests that issues contributing to this lack of computer science participation begin early and involve complex social and environmental factors, including girls' perception that they do not belong in computer science classes or careers. Computer science instruction often alienates girls with irrelevant curriculum; non-collaborative pedagogies; a lack of opportunities to take risks or make mistakes; and a heavy reliance on lecture instead of hands-on, project-based learning. Computer science experiences that employ research-based gender equitable best practices, particularly role modeling, can help diminish the gender gap in participation. In response to this challenge, Twin Cities PBS (TPT), the National Girls Collaborative (NGC) and Code.org will lead Code: SciGirls! Media for Engaging Girls in Computing Pathways, a three-year project designed to engage 8-13 year-old girls in coding through transmedia programming which inspires and prepares them for future computer science studies and career paths. The project includes five new PBS SciGirls episodes featuring girls and female coding professionals using coding to solve real problems; a new interactive PBSKids.org game that allows children to develop coding skills; nationwide outreach programming, including professional development for informal educators and female coding professionals to facilitate activities for girls and families in diverse STEM learning environments; a research study that will advance understanding of how the transmedia components build girls' motivation to pursue additional coding experiences; and a third-party summative evaluation.
Code: SciGirls! will foster greater awareness of and engagement in computer science studies and career paths for girls. The PBS SciGirls episodes will feature girls and female computer science professionals using coding to solve real-world challenges. The project's transmedia component will leverage the television content into the online space in which much of 21st century learning takes place. The new interactive PBSKids.org game will use a narrative framework to help children develop coding skills. Drawing on narrative transportation theory and character identification theory, TPT will commission two exploratory knowledge-building studies to investigate: To what extent and how do the narrative formats of the Code: SciGirls! online media affect girls' interest, beliefs, and behavioral intent towards coding and code-related careers? The studies aim to advance understanding of how media builds girls' motivation to pursue computer science experiences, a skill set critical to building tomorrow's workforce. The project team will also raise educators' awareness about the importance of gender equitable computer science instruction, and empower them with best practices to welcome, prepare and retain girls in coding. The Code: SciGirls! Activity Guide will provide educators with a relevant resource for engaging aspiring computer scientists. The new media and guide will also reside on PBSLearningMedia.org, reaching 1.2 million teachers, and will be shared with thousands of educators across the SciGirls CONNECT and National Girls Collaborative networks. The new episodes are anticipated to reach 92% of U.S. TV households via PBS, and the game at PBSKids.org will introduce millions of children to coding. The summative evaluation will examine the reach and impact of the episodes, game and new activities. PIs will share research findings and project resources at national conferences and will submit to relevant publications. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.