Female Friendly Education: Increasing Participation or Watering Down?

Female Friendly Education: Increasing Participation or Watering Down?

Allan Fisher, iCarnegie, Inc

Sue Rosser, Georgia Tech

Jane Margolis, UCLA

Mark Guzdial, Georgia Tech

Welcome. They appreciate our enthusiasm and the fact that we aren’t at the bar. They want this to be informal.

Allan

Jane and Allan wrote Unlocking the Clubhouse

Sue Rosser writes on female friendly science

Why this session:

computing community not as familiar with Sue’s work as are natural scientists

negative reactions to the phrase female-friendly science

among those familiar, sometimes an overemphasis on curriculum as a diversity solution

session overview

5-10 min of remarks

discussion

continue at the bar

Some questions:

how gender specific are these ideas?

Does the term female-friendly cause problems

does computing as a field pose challenges or opportunities different from those in the fields originally studied

Stereotypical STEM values

strong emphasis on truth, beauty and puzzles, less time on community and impact. Medium on career.

This is why some people don’t “fit”

An ideal STEM community

A diverse culture has a large convex hull. The goal of female-friendly science is to enlarge it.

Sue:

need to attract women to cs

origin of female friendly science

female friendly pedagogy

expand the kinds of observations beyond those traditionally carried out in scientific research. Women students may see new data that could make a valuable contribution to scientific experiments.

increase the numbers of women

incorporate and validate personal experiences women are likely to have had as apart of the class discussion or the lab exercise

undertake fewer experiments likely to have applications of direct benefit to the military and propose more experiments to explore problems of social concern

consider problems that have not been considered worthy of scientific investigation because of the field with which the problem has been traditionally associated

Sue Rosser wrote the Science Glass Ceiling

formulate hypotheses focusing on gender as a crucial part of the question asked

undertake the investigation of problems of more holistic, global scope, rather than the more reduced and limited scale problems traditionally considered

what will the effect of women be?

What can women bring?

female friendly pedagogical techniques-methods

use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods in data gathering

use methods from a variety of fields or interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving

use more interactive methods, thereby shortening the distance between the observer and the object being studied

decrease lab exercises in intro courses in which students must kill animals or render treatment that may be perceived as particularly harsh

theories and conclusions drawn from data

use precise gender neutral language in describing data and presenting theories

be open to critiques of conclusions and theories drawn from observations differing from traditional ones

encourage uncovering of biases

practice

use less competitive models in the practices of scitech

family friendly issues

METALESSON: Discuss the practical uses of science and engineering in their social context.

curriculum transformation

absence of women not noted

women as an add-on to the curriculum

women as a problem, anomaly, deviant

focus on women

transformed, curriculum that includes all

implications for computing

workforce-who is where in cs and ICT workforce

design-what changes in hardware, software, HCI if started from the user

use-do women and men use computers differently

curriculum-what innovations would attract women and more diversity in cs.

Mark

Media Computation: CS as Female Friendly Science

teaching cs in a relevant context

presenting CS topics wit h media projects and examples

iteration as creating negative and grayscale images

indexing in a range as removing redeye

algorithms for blending both images and sounds

linked lists as song components woven to a song

examples of student work

VERY open ended i.e. build a movie, make a collage

there is an online shared repository (gallery)

overall results

avgcs1 pre-MediaComp avg 72.8

in mediacomp, mostly non cs 51% female->avg is 84-90%

similar results with CS majors and Gainesville, UIL-Chicago, Australian Nat

management majors success 49%->88%

students are excited and becoming CS majors, minors, CS teachers, and computational media degree (over 200 majors, 25% female, 2 years old)

students who take cs classes and go on to major, succeed at same rate

like work. (keep working after homework is due)

Media computation as female friendly science

incorporate and validate personal experiences

it’s about using the media in your own life

use methods from a variety of fields or interdisciplinary approaches

psychophysics plays a prominent role in media computation

but it does mean reduction in CS1/CS2 topics

Non competitive models to practice science

focus is on collaboration, yet unique solutions/artifacts

A Cs-specific form of female friendly science

computer science is not a natural science

(can’t emphasize observation)

Media computation lends itself to a focus on observation.

Have you ever seen an effect like this?

Jane

wanted to leave lots of time for discussion

the way this all began (to have this panel discussion) was that there have been some articles that criticize unlocking the clubhouse that equate female friendly with watering down

this has been in the culture that have attacked lots of this sort of initiative

recent editorial about “girly science” How come boys do fun stuff? Blow things up? Hard, fun things…female friendly, no rough and tumble hard science. Equating female friendly with something that it is not, but making it lesser than.

mark’s comment that teaching all the same CS, but in a different context is the key. That the science and the content are the same, but it’s speaking to different motivations.

“Is there a problem with this phrase female-friendly science?” “Does it suggest watering down?”

Anything that is associated with female in formerly male dominated fields, female==lesser than.

What about inclusive science or human-friendly science? But if we drop the female friendly, we’re backing away from bringing more women in and making it a more inclusive culture. In this political climate there is such backlash against any initiatives that speak on the behalf of any special groups. Any disenfranchised. There is immediate pushback…by accusing female friendly science. It is either people thinking our work isn’t lesser than and it’s fear that you’re being marked as inferior and I think that a lot of these…I just fear that backing off from it is feeding into backlash…and that addressing the underrepresentation that is going on…but I’m not for it, but I think that there could be some arguments.

So what do you think?

audience:

primary experience at U of Chicago->Cs as liberal art, could think about liberal sciences. What would the effect be? It’s more inclusive. Also gets rid of investment

Not fond of term. It seems like there’s some basic accommodation factor.

Most people are against the term.

female friendly tends to be used to make things easier (basic training) connotation is what are they taking out. It’s a well intentioned word…BUT in this society, it’s not doing any favors. Do we have enough time to fight the fight?

Sue: When first used term it was trying to get at the biological issues. However liberal arts, fears the loss of focus on gender. We need focus before we are transformed.

people will feel the same way about any “label”

female-friendly has hand wringing. it’s about adding cool stuff. We need to focus on the addition, not subtraction. Focus on enhanced computer science

Allan: What about ComputerScience++?

Female-friendly is a North American concept. There are structural problems that terminology won’t heal. We talk the talk, but we aren’t walking the walk. (from kindergarten).

Mark: Likes the fact that label won’t matter “contextualized cs” CS is new. “Students coming out of CS1 don’t have a strong notion of variables.” We can’t show differences in how people are learning. ITiCSE conference. People don’t know much. We need to be able to show that today’s methods AREN”T working.

Sue: We dealt with this in med school curriculum. Different perspectives and content.

Easier makes her not want to do it. examples would make everyone understand it more.

Why does female-friendly sound bad? It’s not the female…it’s the friendly.

Mark: all other cs is human-antagonistic cs.

Jane: one place very worried that by recruiting women they would lower their standards. How do diversity projects without thinking that you are lowering the standards. Language is important in how we frame it. Wanting to spotlight a group that’s been underrepresented. Not want to back away…it’s an incredible tension. Bothered by “the best and the brightest.” Everyone wants. Makes sense. But what does it represent so much in this country? Have the pathways to being the best and the brightest been equal? The phrase is so loaded.

made her realize that’s what’s at issue is parallel to the issue of affirmative action. taints achievement. Could argue AA is just increasing size of the pool, yet people think of you differently? Parallel is helpful.

Allan: That’s a good point. It’s not so much a question of making it more accessible or lowering the standards. It’s an issue of making it more attractive! We’ve got a big sales and marketing problem here.

It’s not selling enough men OR women.

Allan: For many of the same reasons. Preferential differences in the margin. This is what we need to be doing across STEM to recruit more people.

But guys won’t want to take a female-friendly course.

Allan: But going back to the value profiles. If in various places build in things that appeal to a broader range of people, yes you’ll probably improve the gender and ethnic balance.

Sue: If you implement it improves it for EVERYONE! We’re just the initial canary

at Georgia Tech, been redoing the face of computing. “WE are the new sexy.”

undergrad at UCSD. in this political climate, picking out individual group segregates, instead of diversifying. How about innovative? It’s a new approach. It’s an innovation. We don’t want it to be the sole existence. It’s trying to include a minority group to the point of excessiveness. Focus on innovation, not Gloria Steinem

Mark: hesitate on innovative, cause it can only be innovative for so long. teaching things abstractly makes it harder to learn. If learn in context, you learn well, and things learned well are easier to transfer!

confused as to why we want to introduce a new term. “shouldn’t we just call it computer science and just teach it better?”

ghc2006