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IJIET 2014 Vol.4(5): 394-398 ISSN: 2010-3689
DOI: 10.7763/IJIET.2014.V4.437

Improving Female Student Retention in Computer Science during the First Programming Course

Hacer Varol and Cihan Varol

Abstract—This paper is an evaluation study to improve female student retention in Computer Science during the first programming course. Although, colleges are using variety of ways to attract female students to continue their studies in Computer Science, the number of female students is decreasing in the major. Therefore, we have employed two survey studies to learn more about the lack of supported items in the major and tried to address most of those issues in the classroom to see the change in student’s feeling about Computer Science. Moreover, we support some of our suggestions not only by the survey results, but also students’ performance from the course. We observed that lack of communication among students and with faculty, primitive programming editors, and not well prepared course materials are some of the reasons for the decrease in female student retention.

Index Terms—Computer science, female students, programming languages, retention.

The authors are with Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX77341 USA (e-mail: hxv002@shsu.edu, cvarol@shsu.edu).

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Cite: Hacer Varol and Cihan Varol, "Improving Female Student Retention in Computer Science during the First Programming Course," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 394-398, 2014.

General Information

  • ISSN: 2010-3689 (Online)
  • Abbreviated Title: Int. J. Inf. Educ. Technol.
  • Frequency: Monthly
  • DOI: 10.18178/IJIET
  • Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Jon-Chao Hong
  • Managing Editor: Ms. Nancy Y. Liu
  • E-mail: editor@ijiet.org
  • Abstracting/ Indexing: Scopus (CiteScore 2023: 2.8), INSPEC (IET), UGC-CARE List (India), CNKI, EBSCO, Google Scholar
  • Article Processing Charge: 800 USD

 

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