Thesis (M.I. St.)--University of Toronto, 2007. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 46-06, page: 2912.

Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 40-42).

May’s Journey is a game where you help a video game character, May, finding her friend and repairing the broken game world. This is a 3D puzzle game in which players solve an environmental maze by using the game’s pseudo code to manipulate the environment. The game is aimed at 12 to 18-year-old girls and the purpose is to attract them into Computer Science fields by teaching them basics of programming by focusing on logics and concepts while still asking them to type simple instructions in our programming language. Players do this in a compelling environment, with characters they can identify with,embedded in a relevant story. Our design process was based on our research on young female preferences in games and current teaching techniques for programming.Each decision we made whether for the teaching content, the art style, or the game mechanics and the techniques used to develop this game are motivated by the goal of making programming more appealing and interesting for girls. For this, we developed our own pseudo-code language in order to provide an interface that bridges the gap between drag and drop approach and real programming and introduce typing as part of the experience. We tested our game with 10 teenagers aged from 14 to 17 years old for educational content. We were pleased to see how engaged with the game they were. Overall, the testing results were mostly as expected. The players liked the game (rated 4.8 out of 6) and all of them wanted to play more of it. They all felt that they learned something and 8 of them expressed the will to learn more about programming. Unfortunately, the sample of players is too small to generalize our results so we plan to take the feedback into account, iterate and test it again with a larger study group and get conclusive results. Working on this project has allowed us to understand the importance of iterative design and early playtest feedback. We have also learned the importance of tutorials in games and how that might completely change the users’ experience. Finally, a crucial point was the importance of the UI helpers and targeted feedback in serious games.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2001. / Title from title page screen, viewed April 6, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Edward R. Hines (chair), Galen B. Crow, Mohamed Nurawaleh, David A. Strand, William L. Tolone. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-144) and abstract. Also available in print.

x, 40 p. : col. ill. / Though the first computer programmers were female, women currently make up only a quarter of the computing industry. This lack of diversity jeopardizes technical innovation, creativity and profitability. As demand for talented computing professionals grows, both academia and industry are seeking ways to reach out to groups of individuals who are underrepresented in computer science, the largest of which is women. Women are most likely to succeed in computer science when they are introduced to computing concepts as children and are exposed over a long period of time. In this paper I show that computational thinking (the art of abstraction and automation) can be introduced earlier than has been demonstrated before. Building on ideas being developed for the state of California, I have created an entertaining and engaging educational software prototype that makes primary concepts accessible down to the third grade level. / Committee in charge: Michal Young, Chairperson; Joanna Goode, Member

M. Tech. Busines Administration / While the use of computers and information technology (IT) is becoming ubiquitous in everyday life, IT is also an integral part of a successful economy. The South African government, in its National Policy Framework for Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality, stipulates that science and technology are fundamental components of development, and that the government must devise mechanisms to engage women with these skills. The objective of this study was to evaluate, using the theory of planned behaviour, the difference between female and male students' perceptions about this important field. It aims to explore how prevalent the gender imbalance is in terms of students already studying IT at university with regard to their attitudes towards IT courses.

Thesis (MTech. degree in Business Information Systems.) / The study aims to investigate the intervention programmes that are currently being implemented in South African organisations in an effort to increase the recruitment and retention of women in the Information and Communication Technology industry.

São Paulo is considered to be the hub of technology in Brazil and many Brazilian women are finding jobs in the growing technology industry there. While questions about women‟s low involvement in technical careers in the United States are being researched by organizations such as the National Center for Women & Information Technology, the American Association of University Women, and the Anita Borg Institute, research on this topic in Brazil is considerably more limited. In January 2011, 10 interviews were conducted with women in São Paulo, Brazil working in information technology (IT) careers. In an effort to understand how they got to their current careers interviewees were asked for their personal stories, perceptions, views, and opinions on career choice, work/personal life balance, employment history, and education. The majority of the responses in these interviews revealed a similar situation and similar perceptions to those expressed in the United States. Participation by females in the male-dominated IT sector in Brazil has been decreasing over the past decades and reasons for low female participation in IT are complex. Interviews revealed that 1) women working in technical careers believe that IT jobs are considered appropriate for Brazilian women, but that technical programs and workplaces are mainly occupied by men, 2) Brazilian women feel constrained by the expectation for women to be primary caretakers of domestic responsibilities even when both partners work full time, and 3) women are considered to be better communicators in Brazil, but most upper-level leadership positions in IT are held by men. This study is meant to be an initial effort on which further research can expand. / text

My study is focused on women in graduate Computer Science programs at two universities in Ontario, Canada. My research problem emerges from earlier feminist research addressing the low numbers of women in university Computer Science programs, particularly at the graduate level. After over twenty years of active feminist representation of this problem, mostly through large survey-based studies, there has been little change. I argue that rather than continuing to focus on the rising and falling numbers of women studying Computer Science, it is critical to analyze the specific socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions which produce gendered and racialized exclusion in the field. Informed by Institutional Ethnography – a method of inquiry developed by Dorothy Smith – and by Foucault’s work on governmentality, I examine how specific institutional processes shape the everyday lives of women students. Through on-site observation and interviews with women in graduate Computer Science studies, Computer Science professors and university administrators, I investigate how the participants’ everyday institutional work is coordinated through external textual practices such as evaluation, reporting and accounting. I argue that the university’s institutional practices produce ‘women in computing’ as a ‘problem’ group in ways that re-inscribe women’s outsider status in the field. At the same time, I show that professionalized feminist educational projects may contradict their progressive and inclusive intentions, contributing to the ‘institutional capture’ (Smith) of women as an administrative ‘problem’. Through ethnographic research that follows women students through a range of experiences, I demonstrate how they variously endorse, subvert and exploit the contradictory subject positions produced for them. I illustrate how a North American-based institutional feminist representation of ‘women in computing’ ignores the everyday experiences of ethnoculturally diverse female student participants in graduate Computer Science studies. I argue that rather than accepting the organization of universal characteristics which reproduce conditions of exclusion, North American feminist scholars need to consider the specificity of social relations and forms of knowledge transnationally. Finally, I revisit how women in the study engage with ‘women in computing’ discourse through their lived experiences. I suggest the need for ongoing analysis of the gender effects and changing socio-cultural conditions of new technologies.

My study is focused on women in graduate Computer Science programs at two universities in Ontario, Canada. My research problem emerges from earlier feminist research addressing the low numbers of women in university Computer Science programs, particularly at the graduate level. After over twenty years of active feminist representation of this problem, mostly through large survey-based studies, there has been little change. I argue that rather than continuing to focus on the rising and falling numbers of women studying Computer Science, it is critical to analyze the specific socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions which produce gendered and racialized exclusion in the field. Informed by Institutional Ethnography – a method of inquiry developed by Dorothy Smith – and by Foucault’s work on governmentality, I examine how specific institutional processes shape the everyday lives of women students. Through on-site observation and interviews with women in graduate Computer Science studies, Computer Science professors and university administrators, I investigate how the participants’ everyday institutional work is coordinated through external textual practices such as evaluation, reporting and accounting. I argue that the university’s institutional practices produce ‘women in computing’ as a ‘problem’ group in ways that re-inscribe women’s outsider status in the field. At the same time, I show that professionalized feminist educational projects may contradict their progressive and inclusive intentions, contributing to the ‘institutional capture’ (Smith) of women as an administrative ‘problem’. Through ethnographic research that follows women students through a range of experiences, I demonstrate how they variously endorse, subvert and exploit the contradictory subject positions produced for them. I illustrate how a North American-based institutional feminist representation of ‘women in computing’ ignores the everyday experiences of ethnoculturally diverse female student participants in graduate Computer Science studies. I argue that rather than accepting the organization of universal characteristics which reproduce conditions of exclusion, North American feminist scholars need to consider the specificity of social relations and forms of knowledge transnationally. Finally, I revisit how women in the study engage with ‘women in computing’ discourse through their lived experiences. I suggest the need for ongoing analysis of the gender effects and changing socio-cultural conditions of new technologies.