StitchFest: Diversifying a college Hackathon to Broaden participation and perceptions in computing

Gabriela T. Richard, Yasmin B. Kafai, Barrie Adleberg, Orkan Telhan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

83 Scopus citations

Abstract

While coding competitions and hackathons have steadily increased in number, few women participate. Because these public events present viable opportunities to broaden participation in computing, we designed the theme to focus on "Wear & Care" and collaborative arrangements in a hardware hackathon, called StitchFest, in which 33 undergraduate and graduate students used the LilyPad Arduino to design wearables. Our analysis focused on the interviews conducted with eight female and seven male college participants to understand how targeted recruitment, thematic framing, space arrangements, kinds of materials and material distribution impacted participation and perception. We discuss what we learned about setting a thematic focus and fostering collaborative learning in coding competitions for broadening participation in computing.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationSIGCSE 2015 - Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
EditorsCarl Alphonce, Adrienne Decker, Kurt Eiselt, Jodi Tims
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages114-119
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781450329668
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 24 2015
Event46th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2015 - Kansas City, United States
Duration: Mar 4 2015Mar 7 2015

Publication series

NameSIGCSE 2015 - Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Other

Other46th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityKansas City
Period3/4/153/7/15

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Education
  • Computer Science (miscellaneous)

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