Items tagged with CASE STUDIES Collection

High School Automotive Teacher Has Continued Success Recruiting and Retaining Girls

  • In 2007, 10 of Phillip Jelinek's 125 Automotive Technology students in Monrovia, CA were female. In his 21 years of teaching this class, he has always had between 3 and 13 girls in his classes. It's clear that he uses recruitment and retention strategies that work.

Louisiana Truck Driving Program Actively Recruiting Women

  • 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.

Gender in Gaming Portal Connects Educators and Video Game Developers

  • 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.

Open Lab Time as a Strategy to Increase Female (and Male) Retention

  • 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.

What Kind of Educational Computer Games Would Girls Like?

  • 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.

Source:

Rubin, Andree, Megan Murray, Kim O'Neil, Juania Ashley, "What Kind of Educational Computer Games Would Girls Like?," AERA Presentation, April 1997, TERC 1998.

High School Girls Use PicoCrickets to Learn Programming Skills

  • 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.

Zoombinis and the Art of Mathematical Play

  • 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.

Source:

Hancock, Chris and Scot Osterweil, "Zoombinis and the Art of Mathematical Play," Hands On!, Volume 19, No. 1, Spring 1996.

Evergreen Valley College Increases Retention of both Female and Male Automotive Students by over 25%

  • 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 Increases Female Students in Welding and Automotive Technology from 5% to 14%; Retention Increases to 94%

  • 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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Women Increase from 18 to 30% of City College of San Francisco’s Computer Networking and Information Technology Program

  • 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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Women Now Nearly Half of San Diego Mesa Community College’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Program

  • 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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Research-based Products

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SciGirls Videos
Make science colorful & fun for girls, by girls!

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PicoCricket Kits
Teach girls robotics, engineering & programming skills.

"I love SciGirls! It's a blast and we do so many awesome projects. We got to build hovercrafts and see one in the lake. And we are doing robots, making them spin!

~ Meredith, age 12