Lecturer Dr Sarah Wiseman reports on a Goldsmiths initiative to get more girls studying and working in computing.
An issue common to computer science departments throughout the world is the gender inequality in the student population. Almost wherever you look, the majority of students are male. For the past 10 years, just 15% of students accepted to computer science degree programmes were women – though here at Goldsmiths, the figures are a more healthy 31%.
To tackle this inequality, there are many initiatives being set up to try and encourage more women to consider computer science as an option for further education. These can range from peer support groups for women in university (such as the Hoppers in Edinburgh) to dedicated programs aimed at educating young girls (for example Black Girls Code) and women (for example Code Liberation).
Not all initiatives are successful however. Do you remember Hack A Hair Dryer? IBM set out to encourage women into computing and engineering by suggesting they create things using their hairdryers – a message that could easily be considered pretty patronising.
This year at Goldsmiths, we wanted to approach the problem by doing something that would benefit both boys and girls who were might be interested in computer science; we wanted to provide school children with strong female role models.
We decided to run a series of workshops that would do just that, whilst also showcasing the exciting and diverse range of topics that come under the term “computer science”. We invited 100 pupils aged between 12 and 15 from schools within the local area to come to Goldsmiths and get involved in one of four different computer science-related workshops run by women within the department.
The first workshop looked at problem solving. The aim of this session was to give the kids an idea about the types of puzzles you can solve in computer science. The pupils learnt about encryption by sending a chained up, locked box file between groups. The contents of the box, decided by the students at the time, ranged from Justin Beiber’s new album title to nuclear missile launch codes (both equally sensitive information). Other tasks included arranging celebrities in alphabetical order for the red carpet (using sorting algorithms) and designing a city layout using graph theory.
In other workshops, children programmed Arduinos to send Morse code, and created a servo-powered fortune teller. In our Game Design workshop the children considered how games can be designed to be fun and engaging, and designed their own board games and rule sets. The process isn’t as easy as it seems, no matter how many coloured pens and tokens you have available to you!
The final workshop looked at machine learning, and how you can use the webcam on your computer to create an instrument. Rebecca Fiebrink showed pupils how to use her fantastic Wekinator tool to create drum machines controlled by moving in front of the webcam. The noise from that lesson was quite incredible, from the strange and wonderful noises coming from the instruments, and from the students’ excited conversations while they learnt about machine learning.
At Goldsmiths, we want 50% of our Computing students to be women. And one of the ways of doing this is by working with the generation of children who are just beginning to think about what they want to do at GCSE and ‘A’ level. This project engaged 100 kids – and we’re looking forward to meeting more of them next year.
Thanks to Harris Academy Peckham, Harris Girls’ Academy, Eltham Hill School, Streatham and Clapham High School and Chislehurst School for Girls.