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Encouragement May Be the Missing Link in the Pursuit of CS/IT Majors

Encouragement May Be the Missing Link in the Pursuit of CS/IT Majors. Peggy Leonowich-Graham, DCS United States Military Academy Peggy.Leonowich-Graham@usma.edu Steven J. Condly , PhD United States Military Academy Steven.Condly@usma.edu. Problem:.

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Encouragement May Be the Missing Link in the Pursuit of CS/IT Majors

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  1. Encouragement May Be the Missing Link in the Pursuit of CS/IT Majors Peggy Leonowich-Graham, DCS United States Military Academy Peggy.Leonowich-Graham@usma.edu Steven J. Condly, PhD United States Military Academy Steven.Condly@usma.edu

  2. Problem: • Low number of women majoring in computer science • Low percentages of women in IT workforce

  3. Previous Studies • Girls lose interest in CS at very early age • Boys take control while girls sit back despite being fully capable • Negative stereotypes of computer science –geeks and nerds • Schools experimenting with same sex classrooms - strategy to enhance learning

  4. USMA IT105 • All freshman must take 1 semester course in XHTML, Java, IT concepts regardless of major • Class size 18 • Female students in 50/50 ratio or greater intentionally • IT155 honors version of IT105 • Students surveyed at end of semester

  5. Results from survey • Student self-efficacy improved (precoursevs post course) 2.51 to 3.78 on 5 pt scale • Sex of student moderately associated with 2 variables – Female students were slightly more likely to view IT/CS/EE as being primarily a social, rather than an isolated, profession • Male students were moderately more favorably disposed to taking a section of IT305 that was majority same gender than were female students. • Sex of instructor had very little effect on any variables

  6. Correlations Table 2. Correlations ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). Encouragement rather than MajoritySex has the strongest positive effect on likelihood of choosing IT/CS/EE as a Major (r = .709 vsr = .144). Put another way, Encouragement explains 50% of the variance in Major while MajoritySex explains only 2% of the variance. PostCourseSE also correlates strongly with Major (as expected).

  7. 2 Significant Variables • Encouragement (explains 50% of variance) • Post course SE

  8. Types of encouragement Categories of student responses to “What sort of encouragement would you need?”

  9. Representative categorized student responses to types of encouragement

  10. Conclusions • Cadets self reportedly amenable to considering CS major • Encouragement leading factor to improve likelihood • Post course self-efficacy additional influence

  11. Future Work • Survey IT/CS/EE majors for types of encouragement received • Conduct focus groups

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