Factors Afecting Female Students Motivation Related to Enrollment and Retention in Information Technology Courses

Authors

  • Meirylane Rosa Emidio Avelino Fluminense Federal University
  • Luciana Cardoso de Castro Salgado Fluminense Federal University
  • Karina Mochetti Fluminense Federal University
  • Raquel Bravo Fluminense Federal University
  • Carla Faria Leitao PUC-Rio

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.19153/cleiej.22.2.8

Keywords:

Engagement, Women in Computer Science, Gender Gap

Abstract

The difficulty of including women in a male dominated environment is a current problem, leading to important factors such as the role of women in society, whose rules were always imposed and created by men. Specifically in the Information Technology (IT) field, there have been a growing concern as projects are being created with the main goal of studying this issue and reverse it. This work explores what motivated undergraduate students of Computer Science and Information Systems courses of Fluminense Federal University (UFF) to choose this area and how they are experiencing the first years in college. This research was conducted with a qualitative methodology in order to understand the main fears and difficulties they had while choosing those courses and how they are dealing with a mostly male environment. Our results are based on activities from #include <meninas.uff> project, organized by female professors at UFF to attract more girls to technology courses and to support undergraduate students already enrolled. The female students affect by the project show to appreciate how it is raising an important question about the gender gap and the issues they have faced since they chose a course in the IT field.

Author Biographies

Luciana Cardoso de Castro Salgado, Fluminense Federal University

Luciana Cardoso de C. Salgado is Assistent Professor at Computer Science Department (DCC) of Fluminense Federal University (UFF), where she teaches, advises and conducts research in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information Technology Governance (ITG). She is also Associate Senior Researcher (Semiotic Engineering Research Group - PUC-Rio since 2011). Her current research interests involves: semiotic accounts of Culture in HCI and topics that contribute to expand and refine Semiotic Engineering Theory and Methods, Social Computing and controversies, risks, and adverse consequences surrounding the social media phenomenon (privacy, reputation, engagement,..), Computational Reasoning Acquisition, Human-Data Interaction and Smart Cities. She is Member of Brazilian Special Comitte of Human-Computer Interaction (CEIHC) of Sociedade Brasileira de Computação (SBC) (since 2015) and Member of Special Comitte for Computer in Education (SBC) (since 2016). Luciana Salgado has PhD in Human Computer Interaction (2011, PUC-Rio), MSc in Informatics (2007, PUC-Rio), BA in Information Technology (1994, PUC-Rio). Her professional experience includes several years (from 1993 to 2004) as systems developer coordinator and as business intelligence analyst. She has served in technical program committees of several national and international conferences such as Interact, CSCW, TaPROViz, among others. She is author, along with Clarisse de Souza and Carla Leitão, of the book "A Journey Through Cultures: Metaphors for Guiding the Design of Cross-Cultural Interactive Systems”, Springer, 2012. In 2016, she created the Project #include with others colleagues.

Carla Faria Leitao, PUC-Rio

Carla Faria Leitão is Adjuct Lecturer at the Department of Psychology at PUC-Rio. She got her PhD in Clinical Psychology from PUC-Rio in 2003 and has been drawn to Informatics and Human-Computer Interaction by the subjective aspects of computer artifacts exposed and explored by Semiotic Engineering. She is one of the pioneering psychologists doing interdisciplinary HCI research in Brazil and also the co-author of two Semiotic Engineering books: Semiotic Engineering Methods for Scientific Research in HCI », published by Morgan & Claypool in 2009, and A Journey through Cultures », published by Springer in 2013. Her research interests include cultural aspects of HCI as well as the acquisition of computational thinking at school age and later. She has recently joined a research group at IBM Research Brazil to study semiotics and signification in Deep Learning models and applications.

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Front page for Vol 22 issue 2

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Published

2020-02-26

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Vol. 22 No. 2 (2019): Special Issue on Women in Computing in Latin America

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