Addressing the Leaky Pipeline : A Review and Categorisation of Actions to Recruit and Retain Women in Computing Education

Gender imbalance in computing education is a well-known issue around the world. For example, in the UK and Ireland, less than 20% of the student population in computer science, ICT and related disciplines are women. Similar figures are seen in the labour force in the field across the EU. The term leaky pipeline ; is often used to describe the lack of retention of women before they progress to senior roles. Numerous initiatives have targeted the problem of the leaky pipeline in recent decades. This paper provides a comprehensive review of initiatives related to techniques used to boost recruitment and improve retention among women in undergraduate computer science and computing courses in higher educational institutions. The review covers 350 publications from both academic sources and grey literature sources including governmental guidance, white papers and non-academic reports. It also includes sources in languages other than English. The primary aim was to identify interventions or initiatives (which we have called actions ;) that have shown some effectiveness. A secondary objective was to structure our findings as a categorisation, in order to enable future action discussion, comparison and planning. A particular challenge faced in a significant portion of the work reviewed was the lack of evaluation: i.e. the assessment of the direct relationship between the initiatives undertaken and the outcomes on retention or recruitment. There are only a limited number of studies that include a control group and these tend to focus on one particular intervention or action. In addition often the work presents a number of actions that were implemented and it is difficult to determine which action produced most impact. Considering these challenges, actions were identified that had some level of evaluation with positive impact, including where the evaluation was by measuring feedback. The actions were categorised into four groups: Policy, Pedagogy, Influence and Support and Promotion and Engagement. Policy actions require support and potentially structural change and resources at organisation level. This can be at a department or school level within a higher level institution, and not necessarily just at the higher institution level. Pedagogy related actions are initiatives that are related to the teaching of computer science and technology in terms of curriculum, module delivery and assessment practice. The Influence and Support category includes actions associated with ways to influence women to choose computing at third level and once enrolled to support and encourage them to stay in the field. Finally, Promotion and Engagement actions are initiatives to promote computer science and technology based courses and involve engagement and outreach with external stakeholders such as industry, communities and schools. We present our categorisation, identifying the literature related to actions under each category and subcategory. We discuss the challenges with evaluating the direct impact of actions and outline how this work leads towards the next phase of our work, a toolkit of actions to promote retention and recruitment of women in computing based undergraduate courses. This work will be of interest to third level institutions with STEM faculties, gender-balance policy makers, technical industry players, or any stakeholder in the field of STEM who wishes to understand and implement solutions to the imbalance of women in computing education and beyond

The Importance of Computing Education Research

Interest in computer science is growing. As a result, computer science (CS) and related departments are experiencing an explosive increase in undergraduate enrollments and unprecedented demand from other disciplines for learning computing. According to the 2014 CRA Taulbee Survey, the number of undergraduates declaring a computing major at Ph.D. granting departments in the US has increased 60% from 2011-2014 and the number of degrees granted has increased by 34% from 2008-2013. However, this growth is not limited to higher education. New York City, San Francisco and Oakland public schools will soon be offering computer science to all students at all schools from preschool to 12th grade, although it will be an elective for high school students. This unprecedented demand means that CS departments are likely to teach not only more students in the coming decades, but more diverse students, with more varied backgrounds, motivations, preparations, and abilities. This growth is an unparalleled opportunity to expand the reach of computing education. However, this growth is also a unique research challenge, as we know very little about how best to teach our current students, let alone the students soon to arrive. The burgeoning field of Computing Education Research (CER) is positioned to address this challenge by answering research questions such as, how should we teach computer science, from programming to advanced principles, to a broader and more diverse audience? We argue that computer science departments should lead the way in establishing CER as a foundational research area of computer science, discovering the best ways to teach CS, and inventing the best technologies with which to teach it. This white paper provides a snapshot of the current state of CER and makes actionable recommendations for academic leaders to grow CER as a successful research area in their departments.Comment: A Computing Community Consortium (CCC) white paper, 12 page

The Importance of Computing Education Research

Interest in computer science is growing. As a result, computer science (CS) and related departments are experiencing an explosive increase in undergraduate enrollments and unprecedented demand from other disciplines for learning computing. According to the 2014 CRA Taulbee Survey, the number of undergraduates declaring a computing major at Ph.D. granting departments in the US has increased 60% from 2011-2014 and the number of degrees granted has increased by 34% from 2008-2013

The Importance of Computing Education Research

Interest in computer science is growing. As a result, computer science (CS) and related departments are experiencing an explosive increase in undergraduate enrollments and unprecedented demand from other disciplines for learning computing. According to the 2014 CRA Taulbee Survey, the number of undergraduates declaring a computing major at Ph.D. granting departments in the US has increased 60% from 2011-2014 and the number of degrees granted has increased by 34% from 2008-2013

Factors Affecting the Adoption of Peer Instruction in Computing Courses

Peer Instruction (PI) as defined by Mazur, and variations on this pedagogic technique, have been in use in computing courses for about a decade. Despite dozens of educational research publications documenting positive learning effects, improved retention, student acceptance, and effectiveness for large classes; PI does not appear to be widely adopted for computing courses. This paper reports on a three-way investigation into this apparent contradiction. First, the authors reflect on their own adoption, practice, experience, and abandonment of the use of PI in computing courses. Second, we surveyed the literature regarding the use of PI in computing courses and present a summary of the research findings, variations, and extensions to PI used in computing courses. Third, a survey of computing instructors was conducted to gauge the attitude toward PI in computing courses. To add context, this report considers publications documenting usage of PI in STEM courses, and the adoption of other pedagogic techniques in computing. Particular effort was made to identify the reasons computing instructors don’t adopt PI. This report also includes advice to instructors considering adopting PI in computing courses

College of Arts and Sciences summary of research and creative activities, July 1, 1982 to June 30, 1983

Summary of research and creative activities of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Central Florida, July 1, 1982 - June 30, 1983

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning