Female Under-Representation in Computing Education and Industry - A Survey of Issues and Interventions

This survey paper examines the issue of female under-representation in computing education and industry, which has been shown from empirical studies to be a problem for over two decades. While various measures and intervention strategies have been implemented to increase the interest of girls in computing education and industry, the level of success has been discouraging. The primary contribution of this paper is to provide an analysis of the extensive research work in this area. It outlines the progressive decline in female representation in computing education. It also presents the key arguments that attempt to explain the decline and intervention strategies. We conclude that there is a need to further explore strategies that will encourage young female learners to interact more with computer educational games

Effects of Solo and Pair Programming Instructional Strategies on Students’ Academic Achievement in Visual-Basic.Net Computer Programming Language

This study assesses the relative effectiveness of solo and pair programming instructional strategies on students’ academic achievement in the Visual-Basic.Net Computer Programming Language. Two research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. The sample comprised 68 subjects distributed over the three treatment groups (27 solo programmers, 24 pair programmers, and 17 conventional programmers) from three hundred computer science students of the Federal College of Education (Technical), Akoka, Yaba, Lagos State, Nigeria. The Visual-Basic.Net Achievement Test (VAT) was used to collect data for both the pre- and post-tests. The VAT test was administered to all 68 subjects in the three groups, first as pre-test and after treatment as post-test. Mean and standard deviations were used to answer the two research questions while ANCOVA and multiple comparisons were used in testing the three null hypotheses. The results of the analyses indicate that: (i) the experimental groups performed better than the control group, (ii) the treatment appeared to be more effective among male students than their female counterparts, (iii) the main effects of treatment and gender as well as the interaction effects of treatment and gender were not statistically significant

Pair programming in inducing knowledge sharing

The Pair programming as a part of the Agile software development has been gaining acceptance among practitioners and software development community.This successful leads a wide use of pair programming in educational setting as pedagogy in programming course.Pair programming can foster knowledge sharing among students.Many studies have been done with pair programming in education however most of them do not highlight internalized knowledge particularly tacit knowledge from knowledge sharing processes between students who act as driver and navigator in pair programming practice.Thus, this paper will discuss knowledge internalization based on the knowledge sharing activities in pair programming practices by employing the process of Socialization, Externalization, Combination and Internalization (SECI).The sample of the study consisted of 60 students who were actively engaged in pair programming practices.The factors investigated were types of internalized tacit knowledge in the form of learning, thinking and decision making skills among the students. Online questionnaires were adapted from SECI model into educational context.T Test technique was used to analyze the data.This study is expected to contribute a better understanding of important knowledge sharing activities to construct student’s skills during Internalization process through pair programming.This study’s result will be considered for future rigorous theoretical framework for constructing tacit knowledge among the students in pair programming environment

Investigating the Use of Pair Programming for Teaching Data Structures and Algorithms

Incoming university students who have not previously studied computer programming often find it a challenging subject, leading to high failure rates (Williams & Upchurch, 2001). As a result, enrolment in computer science courses is declining (Carver et al., 2007), with the participation of female students being particularly affected (Werner, Hanks & McDowell, 2004). Research has suggested that the lack of a formalized structure for collaborative learning may be one of the factors responsible for students’ negative impressions of computer science (Werner et al., 2004). In this study we investigated whether the use of pair programming in labs would facilitate peer learning and enhance students’ confidence in their programming ability. The hypothesis motivating this intervention was that the more experienced programmers would transmit some of their knowledge to the weaker students and that the class as a whole would benefit from having the support of a partner to identify problem solving strategies and to resolve coding bugs. Results showed that the intervention was generally well received, although the weaker programmers were more positive about it than the stronger ones. Students that reported learning from pair programming were less likely to enjoy programming (r = -.496), less likely to enjoy labs (r = -.502), more likely to struggle with understanding lab material (r = .561) and more likely to report a lack of confidence in programming (r = -.415). Although there was no significant increase in final exam grades for male students, there was a significant 9.7% increase for female students. The most frequently reported positive feature of pair programming was that it allowed students to meet more people in the class