On influences on women choosing technology careers

Report: Women Who Choose Computer Science – What Really Matters (Google, 2014)

Today I had a read of this Google backed report into women in technology. In the face of so many reports commenting about negative perceptions of women and tech, this one stood apart due to its positivity. The report identified the two main drivers that can have the most impact on increased female participation as ENCOURAGEMENT (social/family/peers and self belief) and EXPOSURE (availability of academic subjects and perceptions of the tech sector). The report also highlighted that some commonly held beliefs about what influences students may not be as important as we credit them.

Top four influencing factors are:

• Social encouragement: positive reinforcement of computer science from family and peers. Family support influenced 17% of people surveyed, peers 11%. It also noted that girls are half as likely to receive encouragement as girls.
• Self perception: having an interest in puzzles and problem solving – and a belief that those skills can translate to a successful career. Self perception of maths ability and problem solving influenced 17% but the ultimate influencer was a passion for solving problems and tinkering.
• Academic exposure: availability of both structured (formal/graded studies) and informal (after school programs). This accounted for 22.4% of explainable factors – the study went on to say that regardless of how they were exposed – young women that had been exposed were more likely than those that weren’t (eg. Anything is better than nothing).
• Career perception: familiarity and perception that tech careers can be diverse and be positive. Accounts for 27.5% of explainable factors on why a young woman would pursue an career in technology. The main problem here is that a flawed perception of tech (ie nerdy, boring, hard, technical) actively dissuades young woman from pursuing an interest, and ultimately correcting the perception.

Things that have less influence include: ethnicity, family income, parental occupation and perceptions of natural ability. Other factors that had limited influence include: having a family member in the tech sector, early exposure to tech, age of first computer exposure, access to mobile devices, natural aptitude, pre-college computer science education.

The conclusion is overwhelmingly positive. Mainly because the report believes that the four core influencers can be addressed. It believes that outreach programs should:

• contain a parent education component,
• provide young woman an opportunity to practice problem solving skills,
• support organisations adding informal or formal computer science education to more schools,
• focus on the visibility of female role models and story telling of positive impact careers.

My thoughts:

I liked the simplicity of this arrangement – exposure and encouragement. It makes sense. I liked the positivity that these are actionable areas and the suggestions for how to act. I like that the report makes an effort to identify things that are not critical influencers (but could be seen as distractions to outreach programs?). I would argue that those elements are things that need to be considered – e.g. parents and peers will still influence but, depending on background/situation, may influence in different ways.

One thing the report didn’t touch on was the age at which young women are most receptive to external influences. The report is categorised into ‘high school’ and ‘post college’ – but doesn’t mention primary education or the role of high school peers in subject selection. There is the common perception that early high school (age 13-14) is the subject choice cliff, the point at which female perceptions of technology is first revealed (and where schools a lot of their student cohort).

On the Digital Technologies Curriculum review process

I thought I’d put up a piece on further developments in the ongoing discussion on the role of the Digital Technologies (K-10) curriculum in Australia. This curriculum would deliver on calls for mandatory technology education, coding in particular, from foundation to Year 10. Last October I put up a piece on the then recent review of the Australian curriculum. This review suggested, amongst other things, that technology should be taught as an elective from Year 9 and older (roughly the same as we have now). The tech industry, and tech education advocates, saw this as a worrying sign.

However, things took a positive turn in December, when the Commonwealth Government (Department of Education) announced it would refer the Review’s recommendations to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). ACARA is the joint Commonwealth/State Government education group that led the original consultations and designed the Digital Technologies curriculum. ACARA has been asked to report to the Education Council at its first meeting in 2015.

There are still a few more areas to address. Fran Foo’s December article on this matter specifically asked for comment from NSW and WA governments as to whether they would commit to supporting this industry call for mandatory tech education (and the Digital Technologies curriculum). The NSW response was “NSW is committed to its current practice where technologies learning commences in early stage 1 (kindergarten) with the Science and Technology syllabus and continues into years 7 & 8“. A quick glance at the NSW Board of Studies website shows that NSW has just launched an updated Science K-10 (incorporating Science and Technologies K-6) syllabus in 2015. The article then quotes the NSW Board of Studies as saying “Should the Technologies Curriculum be endorsed by education ministers and BOSTES (Board of Studies, Teaching and Education Standards) decide to  adopt it, consultation with stakeholders including the advocates of coding and algorithmic thinking will ensue”.

My thoughts:

I guess we wait and see. I can absolutely see how a review could decide that the Digital Technologies would be a challenge to implement – by default it features content (coding) that is not particularly strong in Australia. This is all the more reason that it should be taught. The curriculum review focused on whether the content of the Digital Technologies curriculum was achievable from an educators point of view – was it written in a style that people could deliver. This one I’ll leave to educators. Another point was whether teachers would be supported to deliver the content – this was/is a concern for those delivering the technology subject in the UK, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out. Finally I can see why State Government education groups would be cautious about radical overhauls of education systems. Education is vital and not something that is easy to switch up – so naturally they would want to follow due process.

On the plus side, at least the conversation is continuing.

On university and industry perceptions of Australia’s ICT industry

Report: “Addressing ICT curriculum recommendations from surveys of academics, workplace graduates and employers” (University of Wollongong et al, 2012) [LINK]

Today I’m going to look the first (of five) issues raised in this report: perception (pages 26-43). These insights come from a survey conducted with 18 notable universities and up to 182 industry professionals (with large representation from Australian Computing Society membership). The survey looks at ICT industry perceptions from two target groups: a) universities looking to increase student enrolments, and b) industry looking to increase quantity and quality of employees.

[Extract] …poor perceptions of the ICT industry and profession are having a severe impact on the quality and quantity of people being attracted to ICT careers

The key issues resulting from the surveys are:

• a lack of knowledge/understanding of how different factors actually affect ICT enrolments
• collaborative activities between natural competitors (such as universities competing for students and graduates) are effective
• the concept of the “ICT profession” (really comprising a number of ICT professions) is complex, deriving at least in part from its multifaceted nature, and is neither well specified, communicated to, nor understood by key stakeholders
• improved understanding and perception of ICT is needed in terms of social (what it achieves) and industrial benefit rather than in academic or technical terms (what ICT is and does technically).

Universities:

All universities agreed that to increase ICT enrolments, student perceptions of the ICT professional would need to be more positive. Makes sense. 68% of universities said they had an effective student outreach program including activities such as visits to schools, offering university courses to high school students and teacher professional development. Further areas of outreach could include: publicising high levels of employment for ICT graduates, more aggressive publicity of job opportunities, ICT across diverse industry sectors and a focus on the social aspects of technology. The report suggests that current university efforts are more about winning individual market share and that a focus on broadly increasing ICT industry perceptions would improve all enrolments.

University Conclusion: University outreach activities need to be less-focused on institutional promotion and more focused on raising ICT industry perceptions, and that collaborative efforts with industry and other institutions need to be undertaken as appropriate in pursuit of this goal

Industry:

Industry was undecided as to whether there is a perception issue (43% agree, 33% disagree). However only 12% agreed that industry attempts to raise public perception if ICT were successful while 30% disagreed. Current activities include (unsuccessful) attempts to engage with schools directly, IBM’s Excite program and the I Choose Technology (Group X) program in Queensland. In general, industry respondents believed that their own attempts to raise public perception of ICT have been unsuccessful.

Industry Conclusion: the collective promotional activities by industry to improve perceptions of ICT should be improved by including a focus on social benefits resulting from the application of ICT in different industry sectors.

A question of marketing:

72% of industry responses said that a marketing campaign for ICT as a profession would improve perceptions (8% said no). The campaign needs to differentiate between the different types of ICT jobs that people can do (i.e. technical vs non-technical) and in a diverse range of industry sectors (health, mining, finance etc). Respondents liked CPA’s (Certified Practising Accountants) campaign to drive perceptions and quality for accredited accountants – but then again the survey responses mainly came from people involved in the tech industry’s equivalent – the Australian Computing Society.

My Conclusion:

I liked this article. It was a really interesting insight into the collective thoughts of universities and industry (mainly ACS reps). The main points I pulled were that a collaborative effort between all universities would increase total student numbers. Also, that individually industry was struggling to get cut through with their efforts to increase perceptions of ICT. A key issue seems to be the definition of the tech industry – does ‘tech’ relate to awesome startups smashing it on a global stage or does it relate to that trapped, lonely IT guy that resets your password on the first day back from holidays. Is a career in tech a globe trotting world of investments, pitching and trips to San Francisco – or is it living in fear that your job will be outsourced and you’ll have no competitive skills?

One issue with this survey is that it mainly includes the perceptions of ACS members – it doesn’t capture the boundless energy and creativity coming from the startup scene – a collective that may not see the need for professional accreditation by the ACS.

On Australia’s ICT Workforce Study (AWPA, 2013)

In July 2013, the Commonwealth Government’s Australian Workplace and Productivity Agency (AWPA) released the ICT Workforce Study – a 169 page review of Australia’s tech workforce, where its headed and the challenges it faces.

Here’s an extracted summary of chapter two regarding challenges Australia needs to address to meet future ICT skills demands:

• The ICT workforce is predominantly young and male. Participation rates of women and mature-aged workers are low. The potential to engage Indigenous Australians and people with disability also remains untapped.
• High drop-out rates from tertiary courses, and graduates reporting difficulty finding employment, are causes of concern. Skilled and temporary (subclass 457 visa) migration programs are a key source of supply for the ICT sector since the mid-1990s and continue to play a significant role in addressing the demand for specialist skills not available in Australia.
• Third, employers find it hard to quickly recruit suitable candidates for job openings. Employers increasingly demand professionals with both broad knowledge and deep expertise, including technical skills, domain knowledge and soft skills which include communication and business skills. Employer demand for experienced workers means that there are fewer entry-level positions available for new graduates.

This gives a fairly accurate state of play of skills and employment at the upper tertiary/people- with-jobs level. What I like about this report is that it recognises the difficulties in capturing ICT workforce data – that old chestnut: is an accountant working for a tech firm considered part of the sector? What about a tech IP lawyer? What about a tech entrepreneur that outsources development?

Some other interesting insights:

Recent recruitment data for key ICT occupations indicates that while there are often adequate numbers of applicants for advertised vacancies, employers often considered many applicants unsuitable for the positions. For instance, data from DEEWR’s Survey of Employers Who Have Recently Advertised indicates about 10% of applicants in three ICT occupations—ICT Business Analyst, Systems Analyst and Analyst Programmer—were suitable for the positions advertised, and for Developer Programmer and Software Engineer positions only 5% of applicants were suitable. …(edited) reasons given: a) new entrants don’t have enough experience (in years) and b) applicants often lack soft skills. In some occupations, such as Software Engineer and Developer Programmer, client liaison and ‘cultural fit’ with the enterprise are considered critical when assessing applicants for positions.

This is a tough one – recruitment data indicates that Australia has enough ICT workers – its just that they are not the right type nor have diverse enough life experiences/soft skills. There are a couple of suggestions in the wind as to where the solution lies – the most common one is to increase total volume of tech educated workers. This sets off a discussion on the reasons why the volume of Australian’s enrolling in tertiary computer science degrees has declined (and it has, a drop of 36% since 2001 – but a slight improvement on 2008 when it was down to 50%). This winds its way back to primary school experiences – the idea that students have roughly formed their career ‘personalities’ by about the age of 8.

I’m sure I’ll post more on this.

Promoting computer science careers to high school students

Article: New Image for Computing, Report on Market Research (April 2009) (Association for Computing Machinery)

This 2009 report outlines market research and initial message testing conducted by two New York marketing and communications firms (BBMG and Global Strategy Group). In 2008 the project surveyed some 1,400 college bound high school students (age 13-17) to:

• assess the current attitudes toward computer science as a college major and future career choice
• assess the same attitudes along different lines (gender, Hispanic, African American)
• develop messages that portray computer science in a variety of ways and then test the messages among teens

A couple of scene setting points to start:

• the number of students choosing computer science as a major had dropped 70% since 2000 (UCLA, 2007)
• more than 80% of first year university students did not know what a computer science major actually did
• a different survey (Taulbee, 2007) says computer science enrolments had risen 6.2% from 2006 to 2007 – however diversity is still an issue with only 10% of those awarded to women

The report begins with high school student attitudes towards computer science as a career. For the most part they are positive.

• CS ranked third (behind music and business) as ‘a good major to choose’ – however this is split on gender lines. 74% positive for boys vs 38% for girls.
• As a career choice CS ranks fourth (behind musician (?!), doctor and entrepreneur (?!)) – but notably above lawyer, financial analyst and accountant. Once again – split on gender lines leads to 67% positive for boys vs 26% positive for girls.

The report is most useful when it moves to messaging. When choosing careers high school students focused on:

• Doing work that they find interesting (78%)
• Being passionate about their jobs (71%)
• Being able to spend time with their families (54%)
• Having the power to do good and doing work that makes a difference (52%)

The research provides a gender split for the above responses – it finds that girls are more responsive when it comes to ‘being more passionate about your work’ and ‘having the power to do good and doing work that makes a difference‘. These gender gaps were quite wide (14% and 9% respectively) suggesting that people speaking with young girls about career choices should focus on these elements in their primary messaging.

The next section of the report I found interesting was when they looked at university and career choices based on familiarity with technology. The report creates three segments i) communicators (think teenagers with mobiles/social media), ii) techies (kids fixing modems and assembling computers), and iii) creators (digital media content). Not surprisingly, all teens ranked high on the first, boys on the second and girls on the third.

From here the report identified that a reasonably high number of students in the creators space (which is 44% female) were thinking of taking up computer science majors (74%) and careers (68%). This insight suggests that it is possible to translate a young girl’s enthusiasm for digital media (photography mainly) – into future digital careers. [nb a point of note – while about 70-80% of students thought computer science was a good idea – only 6%-14% considered it as a future career path. The review team proposed a separate report to address this issue]

My take away:

When talking to girls about tech careers I suggest focusing on the outcome/result of the technology. They know that apps, websites and systems are built with ‘code’ but it helps to explain that they are built by people that work with humans, that understand design, that have the ability to make things beautiful and work seamlessly. User experience, app development, business analyst roles are strong points for discussions on careers. Talking through how different organisations use technology to improve lives (ie local councils using apps to fix infrastructure or banks helping retailers conduct transactions quickly) is a good approach. Another point of conversation is that having the skills to design software (or work in tech) empowers the girls to effect this change – to ‘be in the drivers seat’.

Conclusion:

The strongest positive driver towards computer science or an openness to a career in computing, regardless of gender, is “having the power to create and discover new things”.

A summary of “Is Coding the New Literacy?”

This post is a summery of the reasonably detailed article by Tasneem Raja, ‘Why Computer Literacy is Key to Winning the 21st Century‘ (Motherjones, June 2014). This 6,000 word piece touches on the role technology can play in driving productivity, the decline of both student and teacher numbers, the difference between using tech and being fluent in it as well as gender and race divides. Its long but bang on.

Computational Thinking vs Coding:

What I like about this article is that pulls back from the argument that everyone should learn to code and refines the challenge as everyone should have capacity to think logically and engage computational thinking methodologies to solve challenges. The article suggests that the biggest issue we are facing is that “Unless you can think about the ways computers can solve problems, you can’t even know how to ask the questions that need to be answered” (Annette Vees, University of Pittsburgh). Computational thinking involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior,” she writes in a publication of the Association for Computing Machinery. Those are handy skills for everybody, not just computer scientists.

Why you need computational literacy for future jobs:

The article proposes that computational fluency is fast becoming a divide in the same way that numeracy/literacy used to keep a stable of scribes employed to write on behalf of citizens. While not everyone will go on to become a programmer, at some point, everyone will need to work with programmers to solve problems. Knowing how to talk in technical terms will make this process easier. The article also draws a clear line between knowing how to use technology and knowing how to make it. It raises the idea that knowing how to make a powerpoint or edit in iMovie is not the same as being technologically literate.

US Computer Science Study Trends:

Between 1989 and 2009, while almost all other STEM subjects grew in the US, computer science dropped from 25% of high school students enrolled to 19% (USA, National Centre for Education Statistics). In 2014, only 20 states allowed computer science to count as part of a core graduation requirement. Part of this is the lack of qualified teachers. In the US, states manage teacher accreditation and there is no clear path for tech teachers as they move from university into the education system.

Gender, messaging and tech studies:

The New Image for Computing survey (2009, link) tested various messages about computer science with college-bound teens. It found that explaining how programming skills can be used to “do good”—connect with one’s community, make a difference on big social problems like pollution and health care—reverberated strongly with girls. Far less successful were messages about getting a good job or being “in the driver’s seat” of technological innovation—i.e., the dominant cultural narratives about why anyone would learn to code.

In the US, women currently make up only 20% of the tech workforce. This is a drop from 37% in 1987. Excluding huge swaths of the population also means prematurely killing off untold ideas and innovations that could make everyone’s lives better. There is evidence that girls exposed to very basic programming concepts early in life are more likely to major in computer science in college (Increasing Student Interest and Attitudes in STEM: Professional Development and Activities to Engage and Inspire Learners, 2011, link).