Evaluating computer science camp topics in increasing girls' confidence in computer science
Hannah E. Chipman, Haley Adams, Betsy Williams Sanders, D. Brian Larkins · Journal of computing sciences in colleges · 2018
In the field of computer science, there is an evident lack of women. Studies show that girls begin to lose interest in the field from early on, so it is important for initiatives to get girls interested in coding from a young age. There are many outreach initiatives for young girls in computer science, with a wide array of topics. To help increase the number of women in computer science, we held a coding camp for middle and high school girls and offered three topics to choose from. The three camp topics included Scratch, Python, and Unity, and each were a week long. In this paper we look at the impact of the camp and compare the strengths of weaknesses of each topic in increasing girls' interest in coding and confidence in their abilities related to computer science.