Although gender differences in a technological world are receiving significant research attention, much of the research and practice has aimed at how society and education can impact the successes and retention of female computer science professionals—but the possibility of gender issues within software has received almost no attention. If gender issues exist with some types of software features, it is possible that accommodating them by changing these features can increase effectiveness, but only if we know what these issues are. In this paper, we empirically investigate gender differences for end users in the context of debugging spreadsheets. Our results uncover significant gender differences in self-efficacy and feature acceptance, with females exhibiting lower self-efficacy and lower feature acceptance. The results also show that these differences can significantly reduce females ’ effectiveness.

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This study extended the social cognitive career theory model of vocational interest (Lent,

The purpose of this paper is to develop a measure of computer self-efficacy, administer this measure to obtain baseline data at the start of a course on Information Technology (IT), and to describe the IT course for Year 8 in one secondary school. An online questionnaire administered at the beginning of the IT semester-length course, gathered information pertaining to the students’ background, prior computer experience, comfortableness with using computers, and their attitudes towards computers. During the course, observations were made in the six Year 8 IT classrooms under study. This paper reports a work in progress. The principal focus is on the selection and development of research instruments, the administration of the online questionnaire, the analysis of the student data at the start of the course, and the description of the classroom observations. Preliminary analysis suggests the measure of computer self-efficacy adopted in the study is an effective tool. Computer self-efficacy, computer attitudes, online questionnaire, information technology

This report describes research into gender and educational background and its relationship with computer self-efficacy and perceptions of Computer Science amongst university students and school students in South Africa. It is important to understand these issues in the specific cultural and economic environment of South Africa.

Abstract. Little research has addressed IT professionals ’ script debugging strategies, or considered whether there may be gender differences in these strategies. What strategies do male and female scripters use and what kinds of mechanisms do they employ to successfully fix bugs? Also, are scripters’ debugging strategies similar to or different from those of spreadsheet debuggers? Without the answers to these questions, tool designers do not have a target to aim at for supporting how male and female scripters want to go about debugging. We conducted a think-aloud study to bridge this gap. Our results include (1) a generalized understanding of debugging strategies used by spreadsheet users and scripters, (2) identification of the multiple mechanisms scripters employed to carry out the strategies, and (3) detailed examples of how these debugging strategies were employed by males and females to successfully fix bugs.

The number of students with learning disabilities entering post-secondary programs has grown faster than any other disability classification for the past 15 years (American Council on Education, 1992). This phenomenon is probably a direct result of an increase in the percentage of children with specific learning disabilities from two to six percent of total public school enrollment