"You don't have to be a white male who was learning how to program since he was five:" Computer Use and Interest from Childhood to a Computing Degree
| dc.contributor.advisor | Trytten, Deborah | |
| dc.contributor.author | Collain, Mathilde | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2019-01-08T17:52:44Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2019-01-08T17:52:44Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2018-12-14 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/11244/316823 | |
| dc.description.abstract | For over three decades, researchers have been trying to understand why so few women enter STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields, and in particular the field of computing. Some answers to this question were found by Margolis and Fisher (Unlocking the Clubhouse) between 1995 and 1999. Margolis and Fisher found that boys and girls had different experiences with computers from a very young age and that these experiences influenced their desire to pursue (or not) computing. In particular, they found that boys' interest in computers start early --from the moment someone (usually the father) introduces them to computing. And boys continue to be intensely attached to computers until college where they naturally decide to study computing. On the other hand, girls' interest in computers appear later (usually in high-school) and needs reinforcement from teachers, parents or peers. The girls who decide to pursue computing in college take multiple factors into consideration, including enjoyment for the field and excitement about the career possibilities. Today computers are more accessible than ever, yet women are still a minority in college computing majors. Studies suggest that several factors encourage or discourage women to study computing, from stereotypes to role models and cultural influences. But to our knowledge, in the past twenty years, no other study replicated Unlocking the Clubhouse (UTC), investigating the link between early computer experiences and the choice to enter computing. Taking place in a large public Midwestern institution, this study aims to capture how today's computer science (CS) and computer engineering (CE) majors interacted with computers throughout their childhood and adolescence. We were particularly interested in differences between men's and women's experiences. We wanted to know if the differences spotted twenty years ago in Unlocking the Clubhouse (UTC) exist today. Besides, UTC was conducted in an exceptional, highly competitive institution (Carnegie Mellon University). So we also wondered if UTC results would apply in a more typical institution. To answer those questions, we interviewed eleven third and fourth year students who were majoring in CS or CE, including six women and five men. Our sample was otherwise predominantly White and from a middle-class background. The interviews lasted from eleven to sixty minutes. We discussed three main topics during these interviews: computers at home, computers in school, and their decision to study CS/CE. We performed a qualitative iterative and inductive analysis of these interviews and discovered that the participants had indeed a greater access to computers and started interacting with technology at a very young age. Advanced usage of the computers, though, were reserved for a small group of people. We noticed that fathers still had a major role in buying technology, introducing advanced usage of the computer to the children and fostering an interest for computing. The father-son relationship around computers seems to still be a norm. We also found that students followed very different paths leading to CS/CE. Many students for instance did not choose CS/CE as their first major in college. The results we obtained seem to indicate that views and attitudes are slow to change and that efforts remain to be done to recruit and retain more women into computing. Further replications of Unlocking the Clubhouse across various settings would allow researchers to better understand the background of computing students and to create better initiatives. | en_US |
| dc.language | en_US | en_US |
| dc.rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International | * |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ | * |
| dc.subject | computer science education | en_US |
| dc.subject | women in computing | en_US |
| dc.subject | children and computers | en_US |
| dc.title | "You don't have to be a white male who was learning how to program since he was five:" Computer Use and Interest from Childhood to a Computing Degree | en_US |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | McGovern, Amy | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Hougen, Dean | |
| dc.date.manuscript | 2018-12-14 | |
| dc.thesis.degree | Master of Science | en_US |
| ou.group | Gallogly College of Engineering::School of Computer Science | en_US |
| shareok.nativefileaccess | restricted | en_US |
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