Teaching Girls Online Skills: Results of the Wikid Grrls Intervention

Abstract

In 2013-2016, we designed and implemented Wikid Grrls, a 10-week after-school workshop series to teach online skills to middle school girls in U.S. schools. We interviewed and surveyed eighty participants before and after the workshop. Girls' online skills and confidence in them increased for the duration of the workshop series. Participants expressed great interest in learning more, but media literacy programs at their schools emphasizing online skills were lacking. Using feminist theories and the reader-to-leader framework, we argue that such media literacy interventions bring immediate learning rewards for participants. Further, we conclude that media literacy classes that include online skills should become regular features in U.S. school curricula instead of being offered merely in voluntary programs. This is essential to narrow gender gaps in digital knowledge creation and sharing. Future research is needed to assess long-term benefits of media literacy interventions to teach online skills longitudinally to see if, and how, such initiatives figure into subsequent schooling and career decisions.