In the fall of 1995, just seven of 95 students entering the

1 Abstract — Traditional introductory computer science (CS) courses have had little

A significant increase in the use of computer supported learning (CSL) within schools and universities across the world gives rise to concern about gender-related differences in performance and interaction style in these environments. Research has shown that initial perceptions of CSL environments as democratic and offering equal opportunities to all students were flawed because interactions that take place through electronic channels lose none of the socio-cultural complexity or gender imbalance that exists within society. Much of the recent literature states that women are disadvantaged because of inferior levels of access and technology literacy and dominant male behavior. However, the assumption that difference implies disadvantage is challenged by evidence that variable factors such as professed confidence and apparently dominant interaction styles do not necessarily lead to better educational opportunity and performance. This paper contains a summary of gender-related issues identified by international research and academic practice together with supportive case study examples. The conclusion is that women often perform better than men despite the observable differences in interaction style. The issues addressed are: • If inequality of access and technology literacy are assumed to be diminishing problems as recent

The starting point for this study was the findings from a previous study of Australian women working in IT. Four major themes that resulted from a study of IT professionals in Queensland were used as the framework for a deeper exploration of the current position of Australian women in IT. These four findings were explored through open-ended interviews with a broader range of Australian women working in IT. The findings of this study revealed the influence of socio-cultural factors on gender in the Australian IT profession. This paper also discusses more recent research on gender and IT, particularly the attempts to address the undertheorisation of this research area and the significance of mentoring.

Most programs today are written not by professional software developers, but by people with expertise in other domains working towards goals for which they need computational support. For example, a teacher might write a grading spreadsheet to save time grading, or an interaction designer might use an interface builder to test some user interface design ideas. Although these end-user programmers may not have the same goals as professional developers, they do face many of the same software engineering challenges, including understanding their requirements, as well as making decisions about design, reuse, integration, testing, and debugging. This article summarizes and classifies research on these activities, defining the area of End-User Software Engineering (EUSE) and related terminology. The article then discusses empirical research about end-user software engineering activities and the technologies designed to support them. The article also addresses several crosscutting issues in the design of EUSE tools, including the roles of risk, reward, and domain complexity, and self-efficacy

In addition to “learning by doing, ” programming assignments and projects are also the mechanism by which students learn about the utility of computer science – or not. Recent research indicates that the current generation of students is in search of a career with meaning, and women and minorities have long been known to desire careers that help society. In this paper, we provide student testimonials on the importance and benefits of practical and socially-relevant assignments. We then examined approximately 200 first year (CS1) and software engineering assignments at top computer science institutions. Only 34 % of the CS1 projects had a practical or socially-relevant context, 41 % had no context at all, and 15 % were games. For software engineering projects, 62% were practical or socially-relevant, but still 16 % had no practical context. We recommend that educators, through their assignments, place increased emphasis on demonstrating that computer science can be used to aid society and/or produce products of practical value to society.

This paper describes the integration of the Alice 3D virtual worlds environment into a diverse set of subjects in middle school, including the development of tutorials, example worlds and lesson plans. In the summer of 2008 our experiences with middle school teachers included three-weeks of training in Alice and guidance in the development of lesson plans. Our experiences with middle school students involved two one-week summer camps of instruction in Alice. We found both the teachers and the students strongly engaged with Alice. The teachers created lesson plans with Alice worlds to interactively teach a topic and other lesson plans in which students build an Alice world on a particular topic either from scratch or using a template world. The students in the Alice camps had both instruction in Alice and free time to develop Alice worlds of their choice. We found that the students used a large variety of basic Alice concepts and computer science concepts in the worlds they built in their free time.

There are some arguments that suggest women need academic handholding, such as a “female friendly ” curriculum, in order for them to participate and be successful in computer science and related fields. Then there are other arguments that suggest we need to change the field to suit women or help women adjust to the field. In this paper we present a different perspective that shows none of these may be necessary. The “Women-CS Fit ” is already there! Specifically, under certain cultural and environmental conditions we can see that women fit very well into computing fields and what we have been attributing to gender is actually the result of cultural and environmental conditions. The reasons for women participating in – or not participating in – the field of computer science have little to do with gender and a lot to do with culture. In other words, we need to recognize that this is a cultural issue, and an issue that concerns us all. Appropriate local interventions in the micro-culture can have large effect. This argument is illustrated in this paper by three case studies.

differ significantly in their attitudes toward their technological abilities. Concurrently, existing work on science and math abilities of students suggests that such perceived differences do not always translate into actual disparities. We examine the yet-neglected area concerning gender differences with respect to Internet-use ability. In particular, we test how self-perceived abilities are related to actual abilities and how these may differ by gender. Methods. We use new data on web-use skill to test empirically whether there are differences in men’s and women’s abilities to navigate online content. We draw on a diverse sample of adult Internet users to investigate the questions raised. Results. Findings suggest that men and women do not differ greatly in their online abilities. However, we find that women’s self-assessed skill is significantly lower than that of men. Conclusions. Women’s lower self-assessment regarding their web-use skills may affect significantly the extent of their online behavior and the types of uses to which they put the medium. We discuss the implications of these findings for social inequality. There is an increasing body of literature on the social implications of the Internet (DiMaggio et al., 2001). Millions of people access the web daily for financial, health, and government information, for job searches, entertainment, and numerous other activities (Fallows, 2004; Howard, Rainie, and Jones, 2002). An increasingly popular topic of inquiry in the literature on Internet use addresses the ‘‘digital divide’ ’ or the differences between haves and have nots with respect to new digital technologies (Hargittai, 2004b).

A more extensive bibliography on gender and technology in education, prepared for this