Paper Info
Title
Does Participation in a Programming Boot Camp Impact Retention of Women in Computing?: (Abstract Only).
Abstract
While many efforts exist to recruit underrepresented minorities in computing, retention of those that choose the field, still remains a challenge. To retain more women in computing at an open access, baccalaureate degree granting institution, the authors have been hosting a programming boot camp (PBC) for women IT and MIS majors at the institution since May 2014. PBC is a holistic program that focuses on academic preparation, professional development and mentoring. Freshman and sophomore women are invited to participate in this annual PBC each year. While some candidates accept the invitation to participate in the boot camp, some elect not to. The goal of this study is to investigate if participants progress and persist at a different rate than the invited candidates (non-participants) in their chosen field of study. This study compares the academic progression and retention data of candidates vs. participants over a period of three years (2014-2016). The authors look at measures such as current academic status, graduation rates, current (or graduation) major, and completion rates of programming sequence. Preliminary findings indicate that recruitment is a challenge without any incentives for participation. While participation in PBC alone cannot impact retention, this study investigates if students' participation or non-participation can be an indicator of their persistence in their chosen program. This information can be further used to create targeted initiatives meeting students' needs.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1145/3159450.3162252
SIGCSE '18: The 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education Baltimore Maryland USA February, 2018
Keywords
Field
DocType
women in computing,retention,programming boot camp,persistence
Medical education,Baccalaureate Degree,Incentive,Computer science,Knowledge management,Professional development,Underrepresented Minority,Women in computing
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4503-5103-4
1
0.48
References 
Authors
0
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sonal Dekhane1156.48
Nannette P. Napier2857.88