First-year undergraduate computer science students have less investment in the field, making switching to another field of study an easier decision. This study extends understanding of undergraduate women students' experiences in computer science by spotlighting the development or lack of development of peer relationships in the first year of study and how these relate to in-class experiences. Interviews with 36 demographically diverse women from 22 U.S. campuses revealed that classroom teaching practices encourage or discourage development of community and belonging, that peer interactions shape positive and negative perceptions of self-efficacy, and that in the absence of formal curricular interaction, some students sought belonging in extracurricular activities unrelated to their computing major. A fifth of the students described exclusionary behaviors that also influenced sense of belonging, while many more experienced inclusionary behaviors. The poster describes the study, its findings, and relationship to existing research, and concludes with a discussion of implications for CS first-year student experiences.

Computer science faculty are concerned with retaining students who are admitted into their postsecondary programs of study. Some students leave because their interests change, but others leave for structural reasons that could be addressed by faculty. For example, students may leave because of unbalanced workloads, poor social climate among students, assignments that seem to have no personal relevance, or other issues that can be remedied. An exit survey can give departments actionable evidence about what makes their students leave, including whether some groups of students are more likely to leave than others. Not only can a department benefit by routine formative evaluation, it can benefit by allowing students' voices to be heard, implicitly communicating care for students' experiences. In this paper, we introduce an evidence-driven exit survey that undergraduate computing departments can adapt to encourage feedback from CS leavers. We present our development methodology alongside proof-of-concept data to demonstrate the nature of results and the implications for a department that adopts this tool.

Many computer and information science educators wish to incorporate experiential education pedagogies such as study abroad, service learning and internships into their courses because of the profound benefits they can provide for students. However, some experiential approaches come with costs - whether temporal or financial. In this paper, we present the results of a literature review of different experiential pedagogies in computer and information science - service learning, study abroad, educational work experiences, and hackathons. We provide an overview of the benefits and costs of each pedagogy, and investigate what strategies have been used to minimize the costs to both students and faculty. Our analysis uncovers a variety of ways that faculty have experimented with "bite-sized" experiential pedagogies to make them more accessible for both students and faculty. We provide examples of these strategies as inspiration for faculty to sample these high-impact pedagogies, but highlight the gap in empirical evaluation that is needed to fully understand the cost-benefit tradeoffs.

As undergraduate computer science enrollments continue to grow, individualized instructor attention becomes increasingly scarce. The impact of social distance between students and their teachers is particularly apparent in large introductory classes, exacerbated by students' lack of common prior experience in computer science. Some institutions remedy class size and experience gaps by hiring advanced undergraduate students as teaching assistants for their introductory courses. However, without the resources to carefully hire, train, and manage undergraduate teaching assistants (uTAs) during the semester, their potential as trustworthy peer mentors and helpful tutors often goes unrealized. This poster presents details of the uTA hiring process, training course, and management strategies used during the 2022-2023 academic year for the introductory computer science courses at the University of Delaware (UD), a large, public, research-focused institution. This system was designed for introductory CS classes, with the goals of low instructor overhead, long-term scalability, and the development of empathetic teaching assistants who could motivate students toward successful learning. Highlights of the system include a hiring process that considers candidates' personality and enthusiasm alongside their technical skills, asynchronous training provided through the university's learning management system, and the use of a head uTA to manage other staff members. Following the implementation of these policies, instructors and uTAs alike reported positive experiences compared to previous semesters without significant changes to students' learning outcomes.

Service learning is an experiential pedagogy in which students learn through providing services or products for community partners. Computer and information science students can develop valuable products for community organizations. However, while service learning is shown to serve students and has potential to serve the field's diversity goals, community partners' needs are often not served. We explored this asymmetry using an exploratory survey. Faculty from across the U.S. were able to describe learning goals for students, including how they were assessed. In contrast, fewer than half of respondents had explicit partner goals; partner goals were often not assessed. Also, most respondents judged reaching student goals as more important than partner goals, with about 25% of respondents seeing benefits to partners as only a bonus. Faculty justified their choices by appealing to their mission as educators. Yet for a nontrivial partnership commitment under condition of scarce resources, the community partner may be seen as being taken advantage of, which may explain why some respondents have difficulty finding or keeping partners. Further, faculty may not accomplish civic duty goals, since students may tacitly learn that community organizations' needs are secondary. To aid faculty in making decisions and better integrating community partners' needs, we offer advice from survey respondents.

The use of synchronous remote learning (SRL) by computing departments to teach classes is increasing. This paper reports survey results of U.S. computing students from 53 classes offered by in 21 U.S. institutions, assessing the extent to which SRL fulfilled their need for social connection. A reliable social presence importance composite variable was created from nine survey questions. Across all demographic categories, respondents report social presence is important and that in-person instruction is easier to accomplish it. Being able to safely sense and engage with peers socially and intellectually is both perceived as important and easier in in-person classes. Students were more likely to prefer the in-person setting for social expression, getting to know other students, and feeling an obligation to engage. A small majority of students prefer in-person learning to remote learning, with 66% finding it easier to learn in person and 47% stating that they would take all classes in person if given the option. Consistent with prior research, students older than 24 showed greater preference for SRL instruction (p<.001).

At ITiCSE 2021, Working Group 3 examined the evidence for teaching practices that broaden participation for women in computing, based on the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Engagement Practices framework. One of the report's recommendations was "Make connections from computing to your students' lives and interests (Make it Matter) but don't assume you know what those interests are; find out! " The goal of this 2023 working group is to find out what interests women students by bringing together data from our institutions on undergraduate module enrollment, seeing how they differ for women and men, and what drives those choices. We will code published module content based on ACM curriculum guidelines and combine these data to build a hierarchical statistical model of factors affecting student choice. This model should be able to tell us how interesting or valuable different topics are to women, and to what extent topic affects choice of module - as opposed to other factors such as the instructor, the timetable, or the mode of assessment. Equipped with this knowledge we can advise departments how to focus curriculum development on areas that are of value to women, and hence work towards making the discipline more inclusive.

When faculty behaviors foster students' sense of belonging in class, students report better learning experiences and are more likely to remain in the major. Sense of belonging is the feeling of being a valued and legitimate member of a community. Understanding teacher immediacy behaviors that cultivate belonging in postsecondary synchronous remote classrooms is important for retaining students in computing, where remote coursework is increasingly used to address increases in enrollment. This paper reports on an exploratory, survey-based study on the relationship between instructor immediacy behaviors and use of conferencing software features (e.g., chat, breakout rooms) with student sense of belonging in synchronous remote learning environments. Responses from 125 computing students from approximately 53 courses across the US show that students feel a moderate sense of belonging in their courses, with no differences found across demographic groups. Belonging was found to have a strong relationship with students' overall opinions of their courses and their likelihood of completing the major. Students' camera preferences and instructor camera requirements had no effect on belonging. A regression analysis showed that no tool use variables predicted student sense of belonging. However, two teacher immediacy behaviors, setting aside class time to talk about upcoming course content and use of humor, were significantly associated with an increase in sense of belonging.

Computing departments increasingly use synchronous remote learning (SRL) to offer courses. This poster reports on initial survey results to better understand undergraduate computing students' experiences with SRL as compared to in-person educational environments, particularly the extent to which SRL fulfilled their needs for developing social bonds with faculty and other students. Regardless of demographic categories, students feel that social presence factors in classes are important and find in-person environments better at accommodating them.

The benefits of service learning in computer and information science (CIS) are believed to be significant, ranging from providing students with real-world experiences to retaining students to positively impacting community partners. Although there are many benefits of service learning, the CIS domain does impose unique costs for integrating service learning into the curriculum. Yet there is little systematic research to help the CIS community understand best practices for maximizing benefits while minimizing costs. Experience reports about service learning courses in CIS have appeared in the literature annually since 2000, and thus we address this gap in knowledge by conducting a systematic review and content analysis of 84 experience reports from the The ACM Guide to Computing Literature . We synthesize the current state of service learning in CIS as well as derive recommendations for best practices and future research directions.

Service learning-an educational experience in which students provide service to a community partner while learning content knowledge, professional skills, and critical thinking-can provide significant benefits to students and the community. We present survey results from 227 postsecondary students in computing to provide insights into their attitudes toward service learning, and how these relate to course-taking motivations and sense of civic duty. Based on the survey results, we argue that service learning should be required in an undergraduate computing major. However, we problematize this provocation based on three types of pitfalls: courses that do not prepare students to understand social contexts in which technical solutions are promoted, lack of resources for faculty teaching the courses, and the potential to harm both community partners and students.

While the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic is the most widespread and longest lasting educational disruption of the modern era, it joins a host of other natural and human-made crises affecting university education, such as Hurricane María in Puerto Rico (2017), the Islamic State's closure of Al-Furat University in Syria (2014), Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (2005), and many others. For service learning classes, generally defined as students learning as they provide service to a community partner, these large scale disruptions create special challenges even when it is possible to move classes online. The COVID-19 pandemic seriously affected the active involvement of community partners, including non-profit organizations, local schools and hospitals, and local governments. Many community organizations struggled to meet increased demand for their assistance while simultaneously cutting personnel due to budget shortfalls. In this paper, we report results from 34 survey respondents who offered service learning classes in undergraduate computer and information science during spring 2020. Despite the turmoil, only three faculty respondents lost their community partner entirely. In response to disruption, nearly half of faculty removed some of the assignments’ requirements, while others made the service project optional or removed it completely. Going online negatively affected students’ ability to collaborate with each other and interact with community partners, activities that are considered important for reaching learning outcomes for service learning. Nevertheless, about two-thirds of faculty reported that their students completed their service assignments and described conditions that led to or detracted from their success. Based on the findings, the authors present several implications for development of future computer and information science service learning offerings that are resilient during times of crisis.

Studies on faculty adoption typically focus on the awareness and trial stages: how instructors find out about a new teaching practice and why they decide to try it. While this knowledge is important, reform is unlikely to occur if innovations are only used experimentally; we need to understand why faculty sustain their use. To that end, this study draws on data from a two-phase project in the U.S. to examine why computer science (CS) faculty continue or discontinue use of a practice after the initial trial. In the first phase, we interviewed and observed 66 CS faculty from various institutional settings to explore theory-driven themes. From these results, in the second phase, we collected survey data from 821 faculty at 595 institutions. In this paper, we briefly discuss qualitative results, and then use quantitative data to model what impact the following factors have on sustaining use: achieved benefits for students' performance and their satisfaction in CS, the perception of usefulness to the instructor, student feedback, and ease of use. Results indicate that benefits to students' performance are paramount in predicting continued use. We also explore why faculty abandon a practice, finding that the decision often relates to not achieving desired outcomes and, in some cases, students not making a good faith effort to do their part. We observed that the latter experience can engender negative beliefs about students-that they have, at best, a passive attitude toward their learning. Implications for encouraging sustained usage of innovative teaching techniques are discussed.

Despite growing promotion of student-centered teaching, few studies have assessed how widely these practices have diffused throughout computer science (CS) higher education. Studies on teaching practices often treat instructor- and student-centered learning as being dichotomous. Recent research indicates that this reductionist model misinterprets what actually goes on in CS classrooms. For example, a recent study found that most CS faculty categorized their teaching practices as equally student-centered and instructor-centered. We contribute to this scholarship by reporting the results of a survey disseminated to 821 CS educators in 595 universities, colleges, and community colleges in the U.S. Participants were asked to report how frequently they employed several instructor- or student-centered teaching practices and tools during the most recent semester that they taught a specific course. Results indicate that when asked to reflect on specific behaviors within a certain timeframe, faculty reported using instructor-centered teaching practices, especially delivering content via lecture, more than student-centered practices. However, most faculty also reported using at least one student-centered technique, albeit less frequently, throughout the semester. This study found few differences across certain situational and demographic variables (e.g., institution type, tenure status, etc.). Faculty justify their teaching choices with concern for negative evaluations, desire for student learning, large enrollments, heavy teaching loads, and retaining underrepresented students.

In a previous paper, we explored results from the first stage of a two-part research project designed to uncover what influences computer science (CS) faculty to adopt new teaching practices. In the first phase, we conducted interviews, classroom observations, and focus groups with faculty to better understand the organizational, individual, and social factors that influence faculty adoption. Here we discuss findings from the second phase of the project, which uses survey data from 821 CS faculty at 595 institutions in the U.S. to investigate the prevalence of themes uncovered during the qualitative phase. Results show that faculty who tried an innovation were motivated primarily by concerns for students' learning and course experience, including their engagement and participation. Also important were the "fit" with existing practices and tools, and the logistics of implementing an innovation. Factors that reduced faculty willingness to try an innovation include a lack of time, logistical issues, and satisfaction with their current teaching practices. Faculty learned about the innovations they later adopted through presentations and workshops at conferences and at their home institutions, and through conversations with respected colleagues who teach in similar contexts. Implications for encouraging more widespread usage of teaching techniques that improve diversity and student learning are discussed.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues its expansion into homes, businesses and industries, the impact for Computer Science educators is increasingly evident. In 2017, the ITiCSE IoT working group identified relevant content, tools for teaching, and four IoT course types. The resulting report provided an entry point for educators challenged with setting up a new IoT course. The 2018 working group will build on this prior work by addressing feedback on the 2017 report and by examining the rapidly changing state-of-the-art in IoT. In particular, the working group will extend educators' ability to integrate IoT into curriculum by investigating additional content areas and pedagogical approaches.

Smart devices are everywhere, and the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution is only in its infancy. In the Internet of Things, everyday objects share data over networks, with or without human intervention. Self-driving cars, sensing thermostats, door locks, pet feeders, light bulbs, wearables of all kinds, and smart materials for manufacturing all belong to the new Internet of Things, applying sensors and cloud computing to allow for object-to-object communication. As computer science educators, we will soon be teaching students how to develop and maintain IoT technologies. This presents enormous challenges and even greater opportunities. How will we integrate IoT concepts and technologies into existing curricula? How will we handle the mix of software and hardware topics that most IoT projects involve? How will we deal with the legal, social, and ethical issues? How will we choose from the growing number of IoT industry standards? What kinds of equipment and lab spaces are optimal for small, medium, and large-scale programs, and how will we budget for all this? What are the opportunities for interdisciplinary studies? How will we leverage the enthusiasm students feel when they create projects that go beyond text, beyond graphics, beyond virtual reality, and into the tactile, three-dimensional, realm of moving real-world objects? In this working group, we study and document the current state of IoT education and interview educators with IoT teaching experience. We will then make recommendations to help educators integrate IoT topics in computer science curricula.

Most academic departments have outreach efforts to inform potential students and the public about their computing majors. Most participate in events and produce materials to communicate with students, teachers, parents, and employers. Often, however, these recruiting efforts are attended in an opportunistic way rather than strategically. Often, little thought is given to the return on investment of this nontrivial use of scarce resources (money, time), the message conveyed to the particular audience, or to tracking outcomes. In this workshop, participants will develop an actionable plan for increasing the enrollment of qualified women into their undergraduate majors. The workshop philosophy is that departments should accomplish the greatest return on investment, in the shortest time to bring benefits, with the smallest resource commitment. After all, recruiting women is rarely one's "day job." Using research-based materials developed by the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and ideas shared by NCWIT's Academic Alliance members, the presenters will provide information, a planning structure, resources, and activities to support participants in developing a strategic plan to improve the gender diversity of their undergraduate majors.

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Despite widespread development, research, and dissemination of teaching and curricular practices that improve student retention and learning, faculty often do not adopt them. This paper describes the first findings of a two-part study to improve understanding of adoption of teaching practices and curriculum by computer science faculty. The paper closes with recommendations for designers and developers of teaching innovations hoping to increase their chance of adoption.

This panel will discuss the enrollment boom, as well as potential effective practice strategies to respond to the increasing demand for computing education. Does the current enrollment "boom" represent the "third bubble", or is it here to stay? Is there a difference in what's happening at universities that offer Ph.D. degrees or what's happening at 4-year universities and colleges? What 'best practice' strategies exist (if any) to handle the demand? And, importantly, will this "boom" have a positive or negative effect on underrepresented students' Join us for a lively discussion on the recent student interest in computing education at our universities and colleges.

Research on retaining students in computer science is clear: pedagogical and curricular interventions that are experienced by all students are the most effective. Yet understanding what brings faculty to modify their teaching practices is scant. This study presents findings from a study based on interviews with 66 computer science professors and instructors in the U.S. Faculty described various sources of student feedback that prompt them to change their teaching practices. Though not originally an interview topic, every instructor mentioned ways in which student feedback instigated change. Faculty described several sources of feedback that influence teaching choices, with the goal of trying to improve their teaching. These include formalized evaluations; feedback inferred from student performance; direct requests from students; and students' nonverbal behavior. As sources of evidence for making decisions about teaching practices, each of these is problematic. We describe what makes them problematic and offer solutions described by faculty interviewed.

This paper describes a large-scale study of student use and perceived value of videos of faculty lectures as an additional learning resource. The survey-based study was conducted with ~2,300 college students in biology, chemistry, computer science, geology, and mathematics. The study provides a nuanced understanding of the nature and frequency of students' video usage; student perceptions of value of video use; and differences in use and value by students representing different groups (field of study; student demographics; demands on students' time; students' goals, previous experience, and commitment to education). Most students used the videos and a very strong majority valued them as a learning resource Students with longer commute times were more likely to use the videos. No evidence was found that videos are used in place of going to class. On the contrary, students who used more videos also were more likely to attend class. Students overwhelmingly valued the finding tools (index and search). The value that students place on video lectures as a learning resource exceeds expectations. This study contributes to the growing body of evidence that making video lectures available, especially when they have features that aid finding specific sections, is worth faculty time.

The recent upsurge in enrollments in computing means that student attrition has a substantial opportunity cost. Admitting a student who leaves both reduces graduation yield and prevents another equally qualified student from enrolling. Professors cannot change the background of students, but they can control many aspects of student experience in the computing major. This paper presents the results of a study to understand strongest predictors of retention in undergraduate computing based on a large-scale survey administered in 14 U.S. institutions. Although some factors have more influence for certain demographic groups, findings from this data set suggest that some teaching practices have more power for predicting retention in computing including: relevant and meaningful assignments, examples, and curriculum; faculty interaction with students; student collaboration on programming assignments; and for male students, pace and workload expectations relative to existing experience. Other interactions such as those that a student has with teaching assistants or peers in extracurricular activities seem to have less value for predicting retention. Faculty would be wise to protect their enrollment investments by inspecting course themes, assignments, and examples for student interest and ensuring that students have many opportunities to interact with faculty both in and outside of class.

Video of a classroom lecture has been shown to be a versatile learning resource comparable to a textbook. Captions in videos are highly valued by students, especially those with hearing disability and those whose first language is not English. Captioning by automatic speech recognition (ASR) tools is of limited use because of low and variable accuracy. Manual captioning with existing tools is a slow, tedious and expensive task. In this work, we present a web-based crowdsourcing editor to add or correct captions for video lectures. The editor allows a group, e.g., students in a class, to correct the captions for different parts of a video lecture simultaneously. Users can review and correct each other's work. The caption editor has been successfully employed to caption STEM coursework videos. Our findings based on survey results and interviews indicate that this innovative crowdsourcing tool is effective and efficient for captioning lecture videos and has considerable value in educational practice. The caption editor is integrated with Indexed Captioned Searchable (ICS) Videos framework at University of Houston that has been used by dozens of courses and 1000s of students. The ICS Videos framework including the captioning tool is open source software available to educational institutions.

Despite the best laid plans, counterproductive student behavior can interfere with faculty establishment of supportive classroom climates. This paper describes methods for framing the climate of the computer science classroom to minimize outspoken students' unwanted displays of intellectual prowess and engender co-learning behavior among students. Explicit framing of a supportive climate reduces student anxiety about their status among peers, leads them to expect to co-learn concepts, and reduces trepidations about speaking up in class. The framing is grounded by preemptively establishing expectations and addressing concerns through student discussion; asking students to go outside of their interaction style comfort zones for speaking in class; and explicitly describing teaching choices and classroom processes. The framing is reinforced by exposing wrong answers as useful rather than embarrassing, turn-taking techniques for equal student participation, and collaborative learning for assignments and in-class problem solving. Classroom-based retention techniques are important for retaining students who are less experienced with computer science and unsure how to interpret peers? public knowledge claims in relation to their own knowledge or faculty expectations.

The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Extension Services for Undergraduate Programs (ES-UP) has created a large group of trained consultants (ESCs) and clients who are passionate about women's participation in computing. This panel will describe how our ESCs and clients have worked together to effect change and will show outcomes from our activities over the past three years.

Videos of classroom lectures have proven to be a popular and versatile learning resource. This paper reports on videos featuring Indexing, Captioning, and Search capability (ICS Videos). The goal is to allow a user to rapidly search and access a topic of interest, a key shortcoming of the standard video format. A lecture is automatically divided into logical indexed video segments by analyzing video frames. Text is automatically identified with OCR technology enhanced with image transformations to drive keyword search. Captions can be added to videos. The ICS video player integrates indexing, search, and captioning in video playback and has been used by dozens of courses and 1000s of students. This paper reports on the development and evaluation of ICS videos framework and assessment of its value as an academic learning resource.

This paper describes an exploratory study to identify which environmental and student factors best predict intention to persist in the computer science major. The findings can be used to make decisions about initiatives for increasing retention. Eight indices of student characteristics and perceptions were developed using the research-based Student Experience of the Major Survey: student-student interaction; student-faculty interaction; collaborative learning opportunities; pace/workload/prior experience with programming; teaching assistants; classroom climate/pedagogy; meaningful assignments; and racism/sexism. A linear regression revealed that student-student interaction was the most powerful predictor of students' intention to persist in the major beyond the introductory course. Other factors predicting intention to persist were pace/workload/prior experience and male gender. The findings suggest that computer science departments interested in increasing retention of students set structured expectations for student-student interaction in ways that integrate peer involvement as a mainstream activity rather than making it optional or extracurricular. They also suggest departments find ways to manage programming experience gaps in CS1.

Undergraduate research experiences are promoted and funded for their potential in increasing students’ likelihood of pursuing graduate degrees, increasing their confidence, and expanding their awareness of their discipline and career opportunities. These outcomes, however, depend on the social, organizational, and intellectual conditions under which students conduct research. Large-scale comparative studies suggest that computer science undergraduate researchers participate in fewer of the activities that lead to membership in a “culture of research.” This interview-based study illuminates the experiences of both undergraduates and their faculty research mentors in computer science summer and academic year programs. Twenty-five undergraduates and 31 faculty mentors, the majority women, were interviewed. Their stories reveal best and worst case research conditions for students, the special benefits to women who have experienced harassment in their classes, unconscious biases of faculty, the wisdom of faculty who guide undergraduates to successful research outcomes, and faculty’s perceptions of benefits for themselves, their departments, and the students they mentor.

This paper highlights several viewpoints concerning a small regional conference for women in computing, which is modeled after the successful and well-known Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. The viewpoints include rationale for the conference, descriptions of the celebration that provide a snapshot which captures the ease of organizing a similar event at other regional sites, additional sources for finding complete information (including a detailed how-to manual) and an account of the assessment of two recent regional celebrations performed by senior researchers at the National Center of Women and Information Technology (NCWIT).

This poster will showcase the planning stage of a project to develop a searchable repository of artifacts relating to the personal histories of computing educators. Artifacts will include digital audio interviews, interview transcripts, photographs, vitas, and other relevant items. Individuals included in the collection will be balanced across factors such as gender, geographic location, age, race/ethnicity, and institutional size. A key use of the project will be to support, recruit, and retain under-represented groups.

This paper presents a case study as a "cautionary tale" to faculty, demonstrating how students and instructors often perceive pressure to finish projects for clients. As a result of this pressure, and because students generally lacked any understanding of how to work well in groups, students selected their roles based on expediency or familiarity. This worked against the benefits of collaborative learning and learning new skills or concepts, widening the experience gap between males and females and across disciplines. Faculty should carefully consider the learning outcomes expected for students and find ways of ensuring they are achieved.

Two pedagogical techniques of IT programs are compared, a traditionally taught computer science (CS) major and an IT certificate program using a fine arts approach to pedagogy. The latter graduates a higher percentage of women than of males. Although the two programs are quite different in the nature of the material and what students are expected to learn, CS instructors can borrow from the certificate program in ways that could increase attraction to and retention of women in CS, especially by allowing students to hear each other articulate what they are learning; mentioning practical applications of theoretical principles; and requiring that students display their knowledge and solutions to their peers.

The SIGCSE community has produced much analysis of the dynamics causing women to choose Computer Science in disproportionately low numbers. In truth, we have learned that the factors are complex and contextual. This panel presents dynamics affecting women in four different institutions and explores the possibilities for common solutions to unique contextual problems.In the last five years, there has been extensive attention paid to the gender-gap in computer science courses (e.g., [1, 5]). Women are not succeeding in our introductory computer science courses, nor are they continuing in the curriculum, at the same rate as men. The reasons why have much to do with the context of individual courses, which can differ markedly between institutions. This panel explores how markedly different institutions can have similar outcomes, and how there may be some cross-institutional contextual issues that we might address.We will begin presenting an analysis of the results found in one university regarding the success of women in CS. Then we will present how classroom climate and the way CS is sometimes taught can lead to negative experience of studying CS at a different institution. We will suggest that interventions are necessary while students are building images of CS. We will end by presenting such an intervention that changes the classic CS1 course, and leads to changing the focus of what we're teaching.

All learning environments are characterized by numerous communication and interaction practices, which lend themselves to an overall characterization of the climate as defensive or supportive. A case study of public communication and interaction in a large, research-intensive university's first year computer science courses illustrates a learning environment primarily characterized by elements and behaviors associated with a defensive communication climate. Descriptions of classroom interactions and behaviors illustrate what a defensive communication climate “looks like” in terms of behavior, based on extensive observational research. Interview data demonstrates that defensive communication practices can lead to attrition among women in the major and illustrates ways in which the communication climate that characterizes the major is experienced and interpreted by women in the courses. This data also links defensive communication behaviors with lower confidence among women toward their major --- results consistent with previous studies of the causes of attrition among women in other Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Classroom experiences and behaviors that reflect a more supportive communication climate will be discussed within the context of practices and interactions that professors can engage in to ensure that their courses lean toward a supportive rather than a defensive environment as a way of making computer science learning environments more inclusive.

The poster presents institutional characteristics that can statistically predict the proportion of female computer science bachelors' degrees conferred at institutions. School or college (e.g., engineering) has little predictive power in this model.

Choices by students and faculty about their roles in group learning activities can result in students not learning new skills/knowledge. Faculty must be cautious about how students are grouped and should educate students about group roles to avoid problems.

As part of an NSF-funded IT Workforce grant, the authors conducted ethnographic research to provide deep understanding of the learning environment of computer science classrooms. Categories emerging from data analysis included 1) impersonal environment and guarded behavior; and 2) the creation and maintenance of informal hierarchy resulting in competitive behaviors. These communication patterns lead to a defensive climate, characterized by competitiveness rather cooperation, judgments about others, superiority, and neutrality rather than empathy. The authors identify particular and recognizable types of discourse, which, when prevalent in a classroom, can preclude the development of a collaborative and supportive learning environment.