Encouraging Women in CS 1: Interventional Inclusive Pedagogy in Computer Science

Abstract

The gender parity in the field of computer science (CS) is evident in education, workforce and research. This study, explores the introductory computer science class in an attempt to understand the low retention of women in CS. As means to encourage the retention of women in this class in the department of computer science at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, two interventions were applied to address the issue of retention of women in CS. These interventions were based on the research findings where women are more inclined to solve real world problems that can benefit mankind and that women are dependent on social networking and more inclined to share their feelings with others when compared to men. The interventions were executed by offering a Facebook discussion group among consented students in the introductory courses in addition to replacing the traditional assignments with real-life problems in Fall 2015. The participants were surveyed to examine the effect of the two interventions. Our findings concluded that building the online discussion platform and using more practical problems can potentially help increase women's interest in studying computer science. To track future research a feedback mechanism was developed that will aid in improving our approach.