Yesterday, Lucy Sanders of the National
Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) had lunch with Sun’s
“Succeeding @ Sun as a Woman Engineer” (SASWE) networking group. Lucy talked
about NCWIT’s mission to ensure that women are fully represented in the influential world of information technology and computing. I came away from
the lunch with questions about why young women aren’t more fascinated by
computing.
Last night, my 18-year-old daughter was studying for her final High School
exam: Java programming. (Jessica does not have to take another exam until the
end of her first college semester in a year.) She loved her Java class and
wished she had more time to learn programming. Sadly, with just one semester left in
High School, Jessica has run out of class slots and it is too late for her
to join the Advanced Placement in Programming year-long class.
Jessica’s High School required her to take introduction to computing in her
Freshman year. She was miserable and never wanted to take another computing class.
Now as a Senior, she loves her new Apple MacBook Pro laptop and wishes she had
known how much fun programming can be. When she took a break from studying for
the exam, I asked Jessica what made this class different and why she loved
programming. Here is what she said:
- Teachers need to be comfortable with computers. Computers are just
a tool, like a pencil, not something you have to use or something that
is special or different. - It would be good to have both men and women role models. Her High School
has women math and science teachers but no women in its tech department. - Practical tasks, not abstract concepts, are fun. This programming
class taught Jessica how to make an on-line robot walk and beep and
do things. - Programming class should have no stigma. There should not have to be
a big push to get in. It shouldn’t just be the prizefighter girls
who take programming and join the Robotics Club. It should be normal to
take programming. - Some work, like learning how to write a perfect bibliographic
citation, is better done by computers. Time is better spent programming
the computer. - Computing teachers should hold themselves to a high standard and
expect the students to do well. Teachers should be disappointed when
their students don’t work hard. (Jessica described great teachers
as “battleaxe” – a good thing!) - Geeks get enthusiastic. Teachers who are really into it are cool,
are better role models. Honest geeks do not pander to
the subject or condescend to the students. - Talking with senior women who are succeeding in Computer Science helps.
- Lego robotics are fun. They are good for a beginner: practical,
effective, with immediate results. Show the future action
potential or beginning students get discouraged. - Reading books like She’s Such a Geek (Ed. by Annalee Newitz and
Charlie Anders, Seal Press 2006, ISBN-10: 1580051901) helps to keep Jessica excited
about computing. It’s not just that she has an essay included the book – it
is being part of a group of excited girl geeks.
Some of what Jessica said reminded me of a section called “More
Attention to Good Teaching” in Unlocking the Clubhouse
(p.131, by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, The MIT Press, 2003, ISBN-10: 0262632691).
This section addressed some of the changes made by Fisher and Margolis in
Carnegie Mellon’s undergraduate Computer Science program:
-
…good teaching is especially important to women because failures
in pedagogy or in curricular integration affects women disproportionately.
Our main effort in this regard was to use the teaching assignment process
to put better, more experienced, and more senior teachers (note that these
are not always correlated!) into the earliest courses of the curriculum,
where women reported having the most distress.
In March, after we find out which colleges have accepted Jessica, I hope
she will choose a school with a great undergraduate Computer Science
staff. It would be sad to see all of her computing enthusiasm trashed by bad
teaching.
KatysBlog 