Free Talk Zone: Inclusive Pedagogy to Encourage Women in Computer Science

This study, strives to understand the low retention and facilitate mechanisms to encourage the retention of women in the department of computer science at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Two interventions attempt to address the concern for the reason why women quit CS field-one, women are more inclined to solve real world problems either in the scientific or social field that can benefit humanity; and two, women are dependent on social networking and more inclined to share their feelings with others when compared to men. We verified both hypotheses by creating a Facebook discussion group among consented students in the introductory courses and replacing the traditional assignments with the ones that are designed closer to real-life problem in Fall 2015. By the end of the semester, we surveyed our participants to examine the effect of the two interventions. According to the results we got from our research, we can conclude that both building the online discussion platform and using more practical examples will help increase women's interest in studying computer science. A feedback mechanism was developed to help us continue our research in the future following these interventions, and improve our approach by the implementing the feedback.