Can a 2-hour Visit to a Hi-Tech Company Increase Interest in and Change Perceptions about Computer Science?
Venue
ACM Inroads, vol. 2, Issue 3 (2011)
Publication Year
2011
Authors
Larisa Eidelman, Orit Hazzan, Tami Lapidot, Yossi Matias, Daniela Raijman, Michal Segalov
BibTeX
Abstract
This paper presents the "Mind the Gap" initiative that aims to encourage female
high school pupils to study computer science (CS) in high school. This is achieved
by increasing their awareness to what CS is, and exposing them to the essence of a
hi-tech environment and to same gender role models. The initiative was undertaken
by female software engineers at Google's Israel R&D Center in collaboration
with the Israeli National Center for Computer Science Teachers. We describe the
initiative and its impact on the female pupils' interest in CS. One of our
conclusions is that even a short visit to a hi-tech company, in this case – Google,
has the potential to change pupils' perception of what CS is and to increase their
interest in CS and their desire to study it. Our initiative can be easily adapted
by other companies and can be scaled to impact a rather large population.
