Items tagged with CASE STUDIES Collection

Out of the 138 graduates of the two-year old Trucking program at Louisiana Technical College's Lafourche Campus, 26 are women (18% versus the national average of 7%). This is due to the college's specific efforts to recruit women to their program.

A gateway of academic research, Investigaming.com features over 300 articles that helps game developers make games that appeal to female players. Carrie Heeter, Project Leader and Editor-in-Chief of Investigaming, describes the benefits of connecting researchers and game designers, and provides examples of how the research can be applied.

El Camino College expanded lab time for their welding and electronics classes, enabling students to work on assignments while other classes are in session. This has benefited all students, but especially female students in introductory courses, who often need more time to learn lab tools and techniques. El Camino College is one of eight colleges that participated in IWITTS' NSF-funded CalWomenTech Project.

The authors describe how The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, a computer game, uses techniques such as gender-neutral characters and storytelling to help get female and male students interested in higher-level mathematical and strategic thinking.

In 2007, high school girls at Oakland Tech High School in Oakland, California studied circuitry, bridge building, soldering, toy design, green design and robotics through Techbridge’s science, technology and engineering outreach program. Among the resources used to teach the girls were PicoCricket Kits, which mixes robotics and programming with creativity in design. Read about the program’s positive effects on the girls’ self-confidence and interest in computer programming.

The designers of The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis explain how the computer game makes math fun for girls and young women, while introducing concepts such as logical relationships, graphing and algebra.

Evergreen Valley College (EVC), one of eight CalWomenTech Project Sites, went from a 57.6% to 100% female completion rate in 6 months time with an aggregate rate of 88.3% over two years in the Project. Male retention rate also increased from 60.8% to 86.4% (a 25.6% increase).

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Las Positas College, one of eight CalWomenTech Project Sites, increased their enrollment of female students in the trades through implementation of their recruitment strategic plan over two years and a variety of creative strategies ranging from free press coverage of their program on a local TV station (and showcasing the clip on their website) to a pink Women in Technology RULE emery board/ruler give-away.

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In addition to implementing core recruitment strategies provided by the CalWomenTech project, City College of San Francisco's Computer Networking and Information Technology Program, one of eight project sites, incorporated custom recruitment strategies into their annual strategic plans, with a special focus on the college's counseling staff. What's more, adjustments to teaching styles -- based on IWITTS' retention training -- positively impacted completion rates of not only female students, but males as well.

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San Diego Mesa Community College, one of eight CalWomenTech Project Sites, used the CalWomenTech Project's core recruitment strategies along with a special focus on women students during their annual GIS day to significantly increase the number of women in their GIS program. Plus, GIS instructors modified their teaching style based on the WomenTech Training they received on retention, resulting in 100% retention of female and male students for several semesters.

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