Implementing evidence-based practices makes a difference in female undergraduate enrollments

ABSTRACT

While many computing departments may be aware there are "promising" and "proven" practices for recruiting and retaining female students, there seems to be a drive to try new and novel approaches rather than use what is known, or strongly suspected, to be effective. Developing a diverse student body is a long-term multi-faceted process that includes active recruitment, inclusive pedagogy, meaningful curriculum and necessitates student, faculty and institutional support, as well as assessment of progress [1,2,3]. Given all the moving parts and intrinsic challenges of enacting change, departments could make it easier on themselves - and very likely achieve better results - if they intentionally and systematically used practices that have been shown to be effective. This panel will present the rationale for implementing evidence-based practices to increase female enrollments in undergraduate computing departments, and share evidence of successes. Wendy DuBow will examine the concept of evidence-based practices as well as describe briefly the research-based approaches taken by the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) to identify the evidence-based practices an academic institution could use and distribute easy-to-use materials explaining such practices. Elizabeth Litzler will supplement this rationale by sharing compelling evaluation data that show that academic departments that implement a variety of evidence-based practices and actively seek to increase their female enrollments actually do see increases. Maureen Biggers will describe her department's recent efforts to increase female undergraduates at Indiana University, which enabled them to double the number of new female majors. Mike Erlinger will discuss Harvey Mudd's recent successes in attracting more Computer Science majors overall, including a large percentage of female students.

References

1. Ely, D. 1990. Conditions that facilitate the implementation of educational technology innovations. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 23(2), 298--305.
2. Education Systemic Change Tools." National School Board Association. Retrieved August 31, 2011 from http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/edsctls.html
3. Cohoon, J.M., Thompson, L.D., Goodall, J., Dohrman, R. & Litzler, E. 2010. Consultants on Systemic Reform for Gender Balance. In Proceedings of the 41st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (Milwaukee, WI, USA, March 10--13, 2010). SIGCSE 2010. ACM, New York, NY, 554--555. DOI=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1734263.1734447
4. Barker, L.J. & Cohoon, J.M. How Can You Re-Engineer Your Undergraduate Program to Increase Women's Representation in Computing? Small Steps Toward Systemic Change. NCWIT, Boulder, CO. http://www.ncwit.org/reengineerundergrad
5. Strategic Planning for Recruiting Women into Undergraduate Computing: High Yield in the Short Term. NCWIT, Boulder, CO. http://www.ncwit.org/recruitingworkbook
6. Barker, L. and Cohoon, J. Key Practices for Retaining Undergraduates in Computing. NCWIT, Boulder, CO. http://www.ncwit.org/retainundergrads
7. Communicating for Change: Persuade Colleagues to Get on Board. NCWIT, Boulder, CO. http://www.ncwit.org/commchange
8. Barker, L.J. & Cohoon, J.M. How Can You Re-Engineer Your Undergraduate Program to Increase Women's Representation in Computing? Small Steps Toward Systemic Change. NCWIT, Boulder, CO. http://www.ncwit.org/reengineerundergrad
9. NCWIT Academic Alliance & CRA-W. REU-In-A-Box: Expanding the Pool of Computing Researchers. NCWIT, Boulder, CO. http://www.ncwit.org/reubox

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