Practicing at Home: Computers, Pianos, and Cultural Capital

Part of the Volume on Digital Young, Innovation, and the Unexpected Bourdieu focused attention on the role of education and the influence of status distinctions on the selection and valorization of particular forms of cultural capital. Although Bourdieu did not write about digital media, he was a keen observer of status distinctions in education and how these translate into job markets. Through an extended analogy between learning the piano and learning the computer, I demonstrate Bourdieu's relevance for an expanded vision of digital literacy -- one that would forefront the material and social inequalities in U.S. domestic Internet access and in public education. High Tech High School, supported by the Gates Foundation, provides a case of why it is important to examine current digital pedagogy in terms of unarticulated and implicit models of entrepreneurial labor, both because these set up unrealistic expectations and because they can express corporate norms rather than critical pedagogy

Economics and Engineering for Preserving Digital Content

Progress towards practical long-term preservation seems to be stalled. Preservationists cannot afford specially developed technology, but must exploit what is created for the marketplace. Economic and technical facts suggest that most preservation ork should be shifted from repository institutions to information producers and consumers. Prior publications describe solutions for all known conceptual challenges of preserving a single digital object, but do not deal with software development or scaling to large collections. Much of the document handling software needed is available. It has, however, not yet been selected, adapted, integrated, or deployed for digital preservation. The daily tools of both information producers and information consumers can be extended to embed preservation packaging without much burdening these users. We describe a practical strategy for detailed design and implementation. Document handling is intrinsically complicated because of human sensitivity to communication nuances. Our engineering section therefore starts by discussing how project managers can master the many pertinent details.

ECS Evaluation Survey Instruments

This is a compilation of several surveys used in conjunction with a large-scale implementation of the Exploring Computer Science Curriculum in high schools in the Chicago Public Schools: ECS student presurvey pp. 1--2, ECS student postsurvey pp. 3--4, teacher background survey pp. 5--11, teacher ECS workshop feedback form pp. 12--13, teacher ECS implementation survey pp. 14--2

The Impact of the Exploring Computer Science Instructional Model in Chicago Public Schools

As part of the Taste of Computing project, the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) instructional model has been expanded to many high schools in the Chicago Public Schools system. We report on initial outcomes showing that students value the ECS course experience, resulting in increased awareness of and interest in the field of computer science. We compare these results by race and gender. The data provide a good basis for exploring the impact of meaningful computer science instruction on students from groups underrepresented in computing; of several hundred students surveyed, nearly half were female, and over half were Hispanic or African-American

Essays on Gender and Education

Chapter 1 studies the change in women’s college major choices in response to the dot-com crash. Although the dot-com crash had similar labor market effects for new graduates in engineering and computer science, it had different effects on who chose each major: women disproportionately left computer science, but not engineering. I investigate the mechanism behind the gender difference in reaction to the dot-com crash using administrative data on students from a four-year public university. At said university, the gender gap in grades (in favor of men) is larger in computer science than engineering. I estimate a structural model of major choice where students choose a major to maximize expected lifetime utility, conditional on grades, the labor market, and other factors. I find that if the distribution of grades had been the same in engineering and computer science, the gender difference in reaction to the dot-com crash would have been 33 to 42% smaller, suggesting that students reacted to the dot-com crash in accordance with their perceived comparative advantage. My results suggest that grades are an important component in retaining women in computer science degree programs. Universities hoping to encourage women to major in computer science should investigate the sources of gender gaps in STEM grades and work to help women improve their performance. Chapter 2 studies the change in women’s college major choices induced by the introduction of male peers. Researchers have speculated gender differences in labor market decisions may originate in part from psycho-social factors such as gender norms and competition, many of which become more relevant to women when they are in more male environments. We leverage a unique setting that generated variation in women’s exposure to male peers: colleges that transitioned from women-only to coeducation. At such colleges, we observe a steady de- crease in the share of women majoring in STEM over the decade following the transition to coeducation. This corresponds to a 17% decrease in the share of women majoring in STEM for a 10 percentage point increase in the male share of the graduating class. Our results are driven primarily by peer rather than by role-model effects. Our results suggest that women’s human capital investments are affected by the gender mix of their fellow students and have implications for gender gaps in the labor market. Chapter 3 studies long-run changes in men’s and women’s choices of college major over time, in particular whether a Schelling tipping pattern exists in the gender composition of college majors. I build a framework that can produce a tipping pattern in the gender composition of college majors. However, I find that no evidence of a tipping pattern in college major. By relaxing two assumptions in previous tipping models, I explain theoretically why tipping may not occur in this context. I test the modified framework and find that the lack of tipping is most likely explained by men facing only small utility costs of being in highly female majors.PHDEconomicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163214/1/arcal_1.pd

Evaluation of the IMPACTS Computer Science Presentations

Recent computer science enrollments have shown positive trends. However, these trends are not evenly distributed by gender and race. Efforts to recruit underrepresented students should focus on providing information that demystifies the field of computer science. This paper reports on such an effort to inform underrepresented high school students about the field and its diversity. The results suggest that increasing awareness in an enjoyable format can increase student interest in pursuing computer science. These results can provide guidance about ways to encourage students to take high school computer science classes as motivation and preparation for college-level computer science

Assessing the Effectiveness of Computer Science RPPs: The Case of CAFECS

Research Practice Partnerships (RPPs) are a relatively recent development as a potential strategy to address the complex challenges in computer science education. Consequently, there is little guidance available for assessing the effectiveness of RPPs. This paper describes the formative evaluation approach used to assess the progress of the first year of the formalized RPP, Chicago Alliance for Equity in Computer Science (CAFE´CS). This paper contributes to the RPP literature by providing a case study of how an RPP effectiveness framework can be adapted and used to inform partnership improvement efforts in computer science education

Computer Science for All: Everyone can Thrive in The World of Technology

In the year 1985, Computer Science and Information Technology classes were very new and different than other STEM disciplines of that time period. Women back then can be seen in these fields more so than in 2005, about twenty (20) years after. There are some factors researchers found that can be related to the decline in women’s interest in the technology world. This paper will go into more depth regarding women in the technical world ranging from the year 1985 to 2016. The presence of a gender gap and less diversity in the workplace can lead to lower production rates, creativity and overall knowledge of the group or organization. This research will investigate the issue of women not having not having much interest in the world of technology

Bourdieu, networks, and movements: Using the concepts of habitus, field and capital to understand a network analysis of gender differences in undergraduate physics

Current trends suggest that significant gender disparities exist within Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education at university, with female students being underrepresented in physics, but more equally represented in life sciences (e.g., biology, medicine). To understand these trends, it is important to consider the context in which students make decisions about which university courses to enrol in. The current study seeks to investigate gender differences in STEM through a unique approach that combines network analysis of student enrolment data with an interpretive lens based on the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu. We generate a network of courses taken by around 9000 undergraduate physics students (from 2009 to 2014) to quantify Bourdieu's concept of field. We explore the properties of this network to investigate gender differences in transverse movements (between different academic fields) and vertical movements (changes in students' achievement rankings within a field). Our findings indicate that female students are more likely to make transverse movements into life science fields. We also find that university physics does a poor job in attracting high achieving students, and especially high achieving female students. Of the students who do choose to study physics, low achieving female students are less likely to continue than their male counterparts. The results and implications are discussed in the context of Bourdieu's theory, and previous research. We argue that in order to remove constraints on female student's study choices, the field of physics needs to provide a culture in which all students feel like they belong.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl