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Understanding Gender Differences to Improve Equity in Computer Programming Education

Authors:

Jessica McBroom,

Irena Koprinska,

Kalina YacefAuthors Info & Claims

ACE'20: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Australasian Computing Education Conference

Pages 185 - 194

https://doi.org/10.1145/3373165.3373186

Published: 03 February 2020 Publication History

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Abstract

The increasing wealth of data available from large online programming courses offers exciting opportunities to improve equity in computer science education. In particular, it can provide insight into potential causes of differences between groups, informing future investigations, course development and educational policies. In this paper, we analyse differences between male and female high school and primary school students across five programming courses of different difficult levels (n=14,570), including block-based and traditional text-based courses. We examine differences in course enrolment, completion rates and student behaviour while solving the exercises, and consider the impact of grade level, enrolment and course type. We find that, while females are underrepresented in the courses, performance differences only occur in specific circumstances, and in both directions. This suggests that the differences between male and female students are not fundamental, and that there is potential to address them by better understanding these circumstances.

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Ariga TMashimo TYoshida T(2024)Gender-Inclusive Materials to Learn Programming through Data Visualization2024 12th International Conference on Information and Education Technology (ICIET)10.1109/ICIET60671.2024.10542802(477-481)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIET60671.2024.10542802
Kim SLee Y(2024)Investigation into the Influence of Socio-Cultural Factors on Attitudes toward Artificial IntelligenceEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-023-12172-y29:8(9907-9935)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
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Liao PChe XHu MWu D(2023)Cognitive Diagnosis Driven Programming Ability EvaluationProceedings of the 4th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Computer Engineering10.1145/3652628.3652769(847-852)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2023
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Index Terms

Understanding Gender Differences to Improve Equity in Computer Programming Education
1. Applied computing
  1. Education
2. Social and professional topics
  1. User characteristics
    1. Gender

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Published In

ACE'20: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Australasian Computing Education Conference

February 2020

221 pages

ISBN:9781450376860

DOI:10.1145/3373165

Conference Chairs:
Andrew Luxton-Reilly
University of Auckland
,
Claudia Szabo
The University of Adelaide

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 03 February 2020

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ACE'20

ACE'20: Twenty-Second Australasian Computing Education Conference

February 3 - 7, 2020

VIC, Melbourne, Australia

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ACE'20 Paper Acceptance Rate 23 of 51 submissions, 45%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 161 of 359 submissions, 45%

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Ariga TMashimo TYoshida T(2024)Gender-Inclusive Materials to Learn Programming through Data Visualization2024 12th International Conference on Information and Education Technology (ICIET)10.1109/ICIET60671.2024.10542802(477-481)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIET60671.2024.10542802
Kim SLee Y(2024)Investigation into the Influence of Socio-Cultural Factors on Attitudes toward Artificial IntelligenceEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-023-12172-y29:8(9907-9935)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10639-023-12172-y
Liao PChe XHu MWu D(2023)Cognitive Diagnosis Driven Programming Ability EvaluationProceedings of the 4th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Computer Engineering10.1145/3652628.3652769(847-852)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652628.3652769
Suriyaarachchi HNassani ADenny PNanayakkara SLaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)Using Sensor-Based Programming to Improve Self-Efficacy and Outcome Expectancy for Students from Underrepresented GroupsProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588854(187-193)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588854
Theodoropoulos ALepouras G(2022)Game Design, Gender and Personalities in Programming EducationFrontiers in Computer Science10.3389/fcomp.2022.8249954Online publication date: 8-Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2022.824995
Yeom SHerbert NRyu RBecker BQuille KLaakso MBarendsen ESimon (2022)Project-Based Collaborative Learning Enhances Students' Programming PerformanceProceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Vol. 110.1145/3502718.3524779(248-254)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3502718.3524779
Alabdulkarim YAlmukaynizi MAlmaymoni MAlhadlag AAlsalamah SAlsalamah H(2021)Saudi Undergraduate Computing Programs in Light of the 2020 Curricula ReportInternational Journal of Education and Information Technologies10.46300/9109.2021.15.1415(137-146)Online publication date: 19-Jul-2021
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McBroom JYacef KKoprinska I(2020)DETECT: A Hierarchical Clustering Algorithm for Behavioural Trends in Temporal Educational DataArtificial Intelligence in Education10.1007/978-3-030-52237-7_30(374-385)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52237-7_30

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