A human-centric issue that has not been considered in the design of end-user programming environments is whether gender differences exist that are important to the design of these environments. Ignoring this issue would miss the opportunity of enhancing the effectiveness of end-user programmers by incorporating appropriate mechanisms to support gender-associated differences in decision making, learning, and problem solving. This paper takes a first step toward building a foundation for investigating this issue by surveying gender difference literature from five domains with an eye toward possible implications for end-user programming. We present a taxonomy of this literature, and derive a number of specific issues for each element of the taxonomy (stated as hypotheses). This foundation provides a starting point for organized investigations into issues that may be important for making breakthroughs in the effectiveness of end-user programmers.

Departmental attrition data from one state show that the difference between male and female rates of undergraduate attrition from computer science varies by institution. This analysis suggests that departmental factors are important in attrition from CS. Some CS departments inhibit female persistence at the undergraduate level while other departments promote persistence. The observed variation encourages research that compares departmental characteristics such as structure and culture, and relates them to departmental outcomes. Shifting the research focus to departmental characteristics and outcomes will identify effective methods for retaining women. 1.1 Keywords undergraduate education, gender, retention, attrition 2.

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.

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

The impact of gender on computer related attitudes, ability, and use has been actively documented, but little research has been done examining how to modify and reduce imbalances. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of ubiquitous computing (24-hour access to a laptop and the Internet) on gender differences in pre-service teachers with respect to computer attitudes, ability, and use. Regarding computer attitudes, gender differences before the laptop program were observed in only one of the four constructs assessed: future intentions to use computers (behavioral attitude). There were no significant differences in attitude between males and females after the laptop program. With respect to computer ability, males reported having stronger skills in five of the ten ability constructs assessed before the laptop program (operating systems, database software, creating a web page, and programming). There were no significant gender differences in ability after the laptop program, with the exception of programming which continued to favor males. It is speculated that the gender equalization effect observed in this study could have a significant impact on the extent to which technology is used by future students, especially given recent trends in promoting the use of technology in the classroom. OVERVIEW In 1992, Kay reviewed 36 studies on gender and computer related behaviors. While there were clear measurement concerns regarding the assessment of gender

On behalf of:

We have been working to uncover gender differences in the ways males and females problem solve in end-user programming situations, and have discovered differences in males ’ versus females ’ use of several debugging features. Still, because this line of investigation is new, knowing exactly what to look for is difficult and important information could escape our notice. We therefore decided to bring data mining techniques to bear on our data, with two aims: primarily, to expand what is known about how males versus females make use of end-user debugging features, and secondarily, to find out whether data mining could bring new understanding to this research, given that we had already studied the data manually using qualitative and quantitative methods. The results suggested several new hypotheses in how males versus females go about end-user debugging tasks, the factors that play into their choices, and how their choices are associated with success. 1.

This paper presents a case study as a “cautionary tale ” to faculty, demonstrating how students and instructors often perceive pressure to finish projects for clients. As a result of this pressure, and because students generally lacked any understanding of how to work well in groups, students selected their roles based on expediency or familiarity. This worked against the benefits of collaborative learning and learning new skills or concepts, widening the experience gap between males and females and across disciplines. Faculty should carefully consider the learning outcomes expected for students and find ways of ensuring they are achieved.

This case involves a homemaker 43 years of age who is addicted to using the Internet. This case was selected as it demonstrates that a non-technologically oriented woman with a reportedly content home life and no prior addiction or psychiatric history abused the Internet which resulted in significant impairment to her family life. This paper defines addictive use of the Internet, outlines the subject’s progression of addictive on-line use, and discusses the implications of such addictive behavior on the new market of Internet consumers. This research note concerns the case of a 43-yr.-old homemaker whom the author recently interviewed as part of a larger study designed to examine addictive use of the Internet (Young, 1996). Media attention on the subject of "Internet addiction " has stereotyped those who become addicted as predominantly young, introverted, computer-oriented males. Further, prior research has indicated that predominantly object-oriented introverted males become computer addicted (Shotton, 1989, 1991), and educational specialists have shown that women report lower selfefficacy than men when asked about their use of information technologies (Busch, 1995). In contrast to these observations, this case was selected from the author's original study, as it demonstrates that a non-technologically oriented woman with a self-reported content home life and no prior addiction or psychiatric history, abused the Internet which resulted in significant impairment to her family life.

Abstract not found