Interest In Computer Science Research Articles

Anatomy of an Enduring Gender Gap: The Evolution of Women’s Participation in Computer Science

ABSTRACTGiven growing interest in computing fields, as well as a longstanding gender gap in computer science, this study used nationwide survey data on college students during 4 decades to: (a) document trends in aspirations to major in computer science among undergraduate women and men; (b) explore the characteristics of women and men who choose to major in computer science and how this population has evolved over time; and (c) identify the key determinants of the gender gap in the selection of computer science majors during the past 4 decades. The data included 8 million students attending 1,225 baccalaureate-granting institutions from 1971 to 2011, with selected-year multivariate analyses of 18,830 computer science majors (and 904,307 students from all other majors). The results revealed heavy fluctuations in students’ interest in computer science from 1971 to 2011, with trends highlighting a significant downturn between the late 1990s and 2011 as well as a persistent, sizeable underrepresentation of women across all years. The study also showed that while some of the traditional explanations for the gender gap in computer science held true, there have been distinctive shifts in who pursues computer science and why some students may be particularly interested in or dissuaded from the major.

Erratum to: Curricular Influences on Female Afterschool Facilitators’ Computer Science Interests and Career Choices

Erratum to: Curricular Influences on Female Afterschool Facilitators’ Computer Science Interests and Career Choices

Developing Game-Based Learning Requirements to Increase Female Middle School Students Interest in Computer Science

This paper presents work on the development of a Game-Based Learning (GBL) application’s requirements for female middle school students which teaches fundamental concepts of programming. Currently, there are not enough students who desire to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematic (STEM) career fields. Additionally, female are underrepresented in STEM fields, and increased female participation may help partially address this gap. GBL was used to encourage middle school student interest in STEM by allowing them to practice computer science concepts in engaging contexts outside the classroom. The game Sorceress of Seasons was built to teach fundamental programming concepts, and was based on six requirements specifically targeted at female middle school students. The game was tested with 15 middle school-aged students. Playing the game had a positive effect on students’ attitudes towards programming, with female students reporting a larger increase in computer science interest than males when compared with their previous attitudes. The results suggest that the game may be successful in increasing interest in STEM in these students. The requirements developed to guide the design of the game played a role in the game’s effectiveness, and may be useful when developing an educational tool targeting female STEM interest.

From Playing to Programming: The Effect of Video Game Play on Confidence with Computers and an Interest in Computer Science

Research on the effects of playing video games has been limited by a preoccupation with possible negative repercussions. Nevertheless, research has shown that video games can have positive effects on young players’ social lives. The existing body of research, however, has largely ignored the more computer-related aspects of video game play and its effects. This study provides empirical evidence to support theoretical arguments about the relationship between playing video games and computers. The type of scientific thinking encouraged by video games and the technological abilities needed to play video games is suggested to result in an increase in players’ confidence with computers and interest in computer science. These potential relationships are examined using data from over 1,000 undergraduate students to empirically assess the relationship between video game play and: 1) confidence with computers, and 2) interest in computer science. The results indicate that game play is statistically significant as a predictor of confidence and interest. In comparison to the other predictors in the model, the strength of the effect from playing video games is relatively very strong. The findings suggest that exposure to video games as a recreational technology help inform players’ abilities with non-recreational technology and build an interest in technology in general.

Curricular Influences on Female Afterschool Facilitators’ Computer Science Interests and Career Choices

Underrepresented populations such as women, African-Americans, and Latinos/as often come to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers by less traditional paths than White and Asian males. To better understand how and why women might shift toward STEM, particularly computer science, careers, we investigated the education and career direction of afterschool facilitators, primarily women of color in their twenties and thirties, who taught Build IT, an afterschool computer science curriculum for middle school girls. Many of these women indicated that implementing Build IT had influenced their own interest in technology and computer science and in some cases had resulted in their intent to pursue technology and computer science education. We wanted to explore the role that teaching Build IT may have played in activating or reactivating interest in careers in computer science and to see whether in the years following implementation of Build IT, these women pursued STEM education and/or careers. We reached nine facilitators who implemented the program in 2011–12 or shortly after. Many indicated that while facilitating Build IT, they learned along with the participants, increasing their interest in and confidence with technology and computer science. Seven of the nine participants pursued further STEM or computer science learning or modified their career paths to include more of a STEM or computer science focus. Through interviews, we explored what aspects of Build IT influenced these facilitators’ interest and confidence in STEM and when relevant their pursuit of technology and computer science education and careers.

Helping to realize “computer science for all”: Student outcomes of self-pacing in introductory programming courses

Sparked by a series of national campaigns to increase interest in computer science, computer science departments are inundated with students who are interested in learning how to program. Despite the interest, introductory computer science course have relatively low completion rates (approximately 55% at Mason) and high rates of academic integrity violations. In response to this environment, the Computer Science department at Mason received an external grant to redesign their introductory programming courses to a self-paced, flipped format. Implementation began in Fall 2015 with a quasi-experimental methodology that tracks students from an experimental course and a control group (those who took more traditional introductory CS courses) over the course of the semester. Data collected includes grades on assignments, self-report surveys, and classroom observations. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of a self-paced, flipped curricular design in an introductory experiential computer science course on the immediate (in course) completion. In this short lightning talk, we will present data from student surveys and classroom observations identifying any difference across the control and experimental groups. Preliminary results identify a significant increase in student completion upwards of a 20% difference across the groups. In addition to increasing knowledge of the impact of self-paced courses on student retention and success in computer science, we offer an alternative method to collect data on classroom observations via the Real-time Observation Classroom Application (ROCA). ROCA allows for efficient data collection and comparison of specific pedagogies to student engagement measures.

Application of block programming and game-based learning to enhance interest in computer science

More rapid development of the information society poses increasingly acute issue to increase the effectiveness of training in the field of computer science. The fact is that students prefer more applied fields of information and communication technologies in comparison with the informatics and programming. To solve this problem, leading universities and software companies develop multiple environments for block programming, which is inherently more interesting, motivating, fun and practical. It is known that game-based learning significantly increased interest and activity of the students and significantly increases the effectiveness of the training. The article will present a model for application of block programming in the development of educational games for standard and mobile devices and their application in both computer science students and secondary school students. Will be presented the experience of the team in the use of e-learning environments and implementation of these applications in developed courses. The application of the model currently shows increasing interest of all groups of students to programming. All this gives grounds for continuing the work and research in this direction.

Learning Market Parameters Using Aggregate Demand Queries

We study efficient algorithms for a natural learning problem in markets. There is one seller with m divisible goods and n buyers with unknown individual utility functions and budgets of money. The seller can repeatedly announce prices and observe aggregate demand bundles requested by the buyers. The goal of the seller is to learn the utility functions and budgets of the buyers. Our scenario falls into the classic domain of ''revealed preference'' analysis. Problems with revealed preference have recently started to attract increased interest in computer science due to their fundamental nature in understanding customer behavior in electronic markets. The goal of revealed preference analysis is to observe rational agent behavior, to explain it using a suitable model for the utility functions, and to predict future agent behavior. Our results are the first polynomial-time algorithms to learn utility and budget parameters via revealed preference queries in classic Fisher markets with multiple buyers. Our analysis concentrates on linear, CES, and Leontief markets, which are the most prominent classes studied in the literature. Some of our results extend to general Arrow-Debreu exchange markets.

Using Scratch and App Inventor for teaching introductory programming in secondary education. A case study

Paradoxically, as the role and significance of computing have increased in society and the economy, and coding is recognised as the fourth literacy, the number of students attending a programming course is in decline. In an attempt to increase interest in computer science (CS), there has been made much effort in developing tools and activities as preliminary learning materials in schools and universities. App Inventor and Scratch strive to engage the novice users by allowing them to write programs about things that connect with their interests in contrast to more conventional programming. In this paper, we focus on the use of these two block-based programming environments as tools to facilitate learning programming for novices. In our analysis, both novice programming environments (NPEs) seemed to be attractive platforms for introducing fundamental concepts in computer programming and both look appealing for majors and non-majors as well.

Using Scratch and App Inventor for teaching introductory programming in Secondary Education. A case study.

Paradoxically, as the role and significance of computing have increased in society and the economy, and coding is recognised as the fourth literacy, the number of students attending a programming course is in decline. In an attempt to increase interest in computer science (CS), there has been made much effort in developing tools and activities as preliminary learning materials in schools and universities. App Inventor and Scratch strive to engage the novice users by allowing them to write programs about things that connect with their interests in contrast to more conventional programming. In this paper, we focus on the use of these two block-based programming environments as tools to facilitate learning programming for novices. In our analysis, both novice programming environments (NPEs) seemed to be attractive platforms for introducing fundamental concepts in computer programming and both look appealing for majors and non-majors as well.

An ensemble method for data stream classification in the presence of concept drift

One recent area of interest in computer science is data stream management and processing. By ‘data stream’, we refer to continuous and rapidly generated packages of data. Specific features of data streams are immense volume, high production rate, limited data processing time, and data concept drift; these features differentiate the data stream from standard types of data. An issue for the data stream is classification of input data. A novel ensemble classifier is proposed in this paper. The classifier uses base classifiers of two weighting functions under different data input conditions. In addition, a new method is used to determine drift, which emphasizes the precision of the algorithm. Another characteristic of the proposed method is removal of different numbers of the base classifiers based on their quality. Implementation of a weighting mechanism to the base classifiers at the decision-making stage is another advantage of the algorithm. This facilitates adaptability when drifts take place, which leads to classifiers with higher efficiency. Furthermore, the proposed method is tested on a set of standard data and the results confirm higher accuracy compared to available ensemble classifiers and single classifiers. In addition, in some cases the proposed classifier is faster and needs less storage space.

Supporting ontology adaptation and versioning based on a graph of relevance

Ontologies recently have become a topic of interest in computer science since they are seen as a semantic support to explicit and enrich data-models as well as to ensure interoperability of data. Moreover, supporting ontology adaptation becomes essential and extremely important, mainly when using ontologies in changing environments. An important issue when dealing with ontology adaptation is the management of several versions. Ontology versioning is a complex and multifaceted problem as it should take into account change management, versions storage and access, consistency issues, etc. The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach and tool for ontology adaptation and versioning. A series of techniques are proposed to ‘safely’ evolve a given ontology and produce a new consistent version. The ontology versions are ordered in a graph according to their relevance. The relevance is computed based on four criteria: conceptualisation, usage frequency, abstraction and completeness. The techniques to carry out the versioning process are implemented in the Consistology tool, which has been developed to assist users in expressing adaptation requirements and managing ontology versions.

Women in Community College: Factors Related to Intentions to Pursue Computer Science

Community colleges (CC) are obvious places to recruit more women into computer science. Enrollment at CCs has grown in response to a struggling economy, and students are more likely to be from underrepresented groups than students enrolled in 4-year universities (National Center for Education Statistics, 2008). However, we know little about why so few go on to study computing and information sciences (CIS) at 4-year universities. This study was designed to test three widely held beliefs about recruiting and retaining women in CIS majors by focusing on women who have expressed interest in computer science. Data were collected from 191 female students enrolled in an introduction to programming class at one of 15 community colleges in California. Results show that women with high intention of pursuing CIS were more avid computer users in their teens and currently play more video games. They also have a positive view of computer programming and place greater value on computing, related to an interest in solving challenging problems and financial motives, rather than an interest in using computing for the social good. Support from others, such as family, friends, and teachers, was not related to intention. The authors discuss how the results can inform strategies to increase the number of women who transfer from community colleges to 4-year universities in CIS fields.

Cultural stereotypes as gatekeepers: increasing girls' interest in computer science and engineering by diversifying stereotypes.

Despite having made significant inroads into many traditionally male-dominated fields (e.g., biology, chemistry), women continue to be underrepresented in computer science and engineering. We propose that students’ stereotypes about the culture of these fields—including the kind of people, the work involved, and the values of the field—steer girls away from choosing to enter them. Computer science and engineering are stereotyped in modern American culture as male-oriented fields that involve social isolation, an intense focus on machinery, and inborn brilliance. These stereotypes are compatible with qualities that are typically more valued in men than women in American culture. As a result, when computer science and engineering stereotypes are salient, girls report less interest in these fields than their male peers. However, altering these stereotypes—by broadening the representation of the people who do this work, the work itself, and the environments in which it occurs—significantly increases girls’ sense of belonging and interest in the field. Academic stereotypes thus serve as gatekeepers, driving girls away from certain fields and constraining their learning opportunities and career aspirations.

A memristive diode for neuromorphic computing

Memristive devices may extent the potential of information processing beyond Boolean computation. Of particular interest for computer science are those devices that change behavior according to the particular stimulus given. This property is called plasticity and is typical of biological systems, like neuron synapses. We here show that a memristive diode can be fabricated by using low-resistive ZnO. Bipolar memristive switching is induced in ZnO-based Schottky diodes. The electrical characterization of the devices confirms that switching is due to uniform migration of oxygen vacancies under the interface. The induced electrical state can be dynamically altered according to polarity, amplitude and duration of applied electrical stimuli.

초등정보과학영재와 일반학생의 진로발달 및 직업관 인식에 대한 조사 연구

The purpose of this study is to compare the differences of the career development and the occupational view between giftedness in computer science and normal students in elementary school, so the results of this study provide assistance to the teacher for the direction and guidance on the career education of the giftedness in computer science in elementary school. This survey is based on 82 giftedness in computer science and 167 normal elementary school students. The questionnaires used in the study contain questions asking regarding the career development and the occupational view. The results of this study were as follows : First, according to the consciousness analysis result about career, the giftedness in computer science choose to be scientific technicians, the normal students choose to be artists. The both groups get career information from their parents, but they usually don`t get career counseling from teachers. The education of giftedness in computer science does not contribute to changing their dreams, while normal students have no interest in computer science. Second, according to the career development analysis result, in comparison with non-gifted students, the gifted in information science had more success in all domains of career development. Third, according to the occupational view analysis result, the information science gifted students had higher meaningful rate than the normal students. Intrinsic domain` had higher meaningful rate among the subordinate domains, there is no difference in `extrinsic domain` and `incidental domain` between the information science gifted students and the normal students. Fourth, according to the correlation analysis result of the career development and the occupational view, there is a positive correlation in all domains of them. The high they are in the career development, the more they have the certain occupational view. Likewise, if they have the certain occupational view, they will be more successful in career development. Based on the findings of this research, the directing and guidance on the career education of giftedness in computer science in elementary school is same as the followings. We should educate parents regarding information about career for students who are under the influence of parents greatly and indicate them to apply to their children appropriately. In addition, for making them to have the positive image of the computer science, teacher should provide more information about the area of information and form various curriculums to induce more interests about computer science. We need to strengthen the career education for guiding the gifted to assist them to establish their own goal and realize them how to study and choose their career in the future. In school education field, it must develop and manage the definite and empirical program, not the career development program which is focused on only entrance into advanced school, to boost self-realization ability and the suitable career education program based on the correct understanding on giftedness in computer science. For this, through steady trying and research, teachers should be eater to develop the career education for students. Also, we have to implement the internal stability career education program, so it will help students to be aware of their job and career; therefore, students will be able to plan and prepare for their career in this rapid changing world.

Computer science curricula for the coming decade

Interest in Computer Science has fluctuated dramatically in the past 20 years. Many factors have been cited for these enrollment dynamics, including changes in the high-tech economy and the general...

Bringing young women into computing through the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing program

A program to encourage and support girls and women in pursuing their computer science interests.

Foreword by the Editor [EM Programmer's Notebook

Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in computational science and engineering applications in exploiting specialized computer architectures, especially graphical processing units (GPUs). Computational electro magnetics (CEM) has been no exception. The application of GPUs to CEM has been described in a number of contributions to this column, including the December 2005, June and December 2010, and the October 2012 issues. Although the technology has been in use for some years now, GPUs are not simple to program when high computational throughout is sought - and this is, after all, the main motivation for using such devices. In this month's contribution, the authors discuss some techniques for simplifying this, working in the context of the CUDA development environment. We thank the authors for their useful contribution on a topic of very considerable current interest.

The Stereotypical Computer Scientist: Gendered Media Representations as a Barrier to Inclusion for Women

The present research examines undergraduates’ stereotypes of the people in computer science, and whether changing these stereotypes using the media can influence women’s interest in computer science. In Study 1, college students at two U.S. West Coast universities (N = 293) provided descriptions of computer science majors. Coding these descriptions revealed that computer scientists were perceived as having traits that are incompatible with the female gender role, such as lacking interpersonal skills and being singularly focused on computers. In Study 2, college students at two U.S. West Coast universities (N = 54) read fabricated newspaper articles about computer scientists that either described them as fitting the current stereotypes or no longer fitting these stereotypes. Women who read that computer scientists no longer fit the stereotypes expressed more interest in computer science than those who read that computer scientists fit the stereotypes. In contrast, men’s interest in computer science did not differ across articles. Taken together, these studies suggest that stereotypes of academic fields influence who chooses to participate in these fields, and that recruiting efforts to draw more women into computer science would benefit from media efforts that alter how computer scientists are depicted.