Introducing Computer Science to Brazilian Girls in Elementary School Through HCI Concepts
Abstract
The participation of women in workgroups is essential to any kind of job. Nowadays Computer Science has little presence of women. Consequently, it is necessary to motivate girls to choose Computing as a career. This paper describes an experiment consisting of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) activities that were used to demonstrate that Computing is more than only programming. The activities were based on the concepts and materials of the Computer Science Unplugged Project. Besides, this work presents the results with the HCI activities performed in the context two Brazilian projects. The results are qualitative in nature and provide insights about HCI activities to elementary school student girls. Fifty-two girls from two different cities and four different public schools participated. All students developed the five tasks designed by CSU materials and were able to articulate concepts of HCI.
Keywords
Women in computer science Digital girls Computer science unplugged Human-Computer interactionNotes
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Araucaria Foundation (Paraná/Brazil) and CNPq for financial support.
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