CREU-YSU

QUEST!

2007-04-04T10:49:00.000-05:00

Well, we presented our poster and research to QUEST yesterday. The general audience seems somewhat interested in our topic and research and it was a good experience to share what we've been doing over the past 6 months with persons outside of our normal environment.
It was also enjoyable to see other groups/students/professors were working as hard, if not harder, than we are researching their own area of interest.

OCWIC!

2007-02-18T23:20:00.000-05:00

OCWIC was great! Shauna, Irena (another student), Dr. Lazar, and I had a wonderful time. We learned about jobs in the IT field, opportunities for graduate work, and exciting computing projects that other women in Ohio are doing. We also had the opportunity to share our poster about "We are IT!" Day. This weekend gave us an excellent opportunity to network with other women in computing and learn about the opportunities that are available to us.
Many of the conference participants agreed with us that, in order to recruit more females to the computing majors, we need to encourage girls to consider the IT field from a young age. The middle school years are among the most formative, and convincing girls of that age that IT is exciting and challenging will hopefully result in their giving a career in IT more consideration than girls our age did.

quick update

2007-02-02T14:15:00.000-05:00

just a quick update on what's going on with our team...

We have finished our graphs and reports on the surveys from We are IT. We will using this data to present (most likely in poster sessions) at OCWIC (in Columbus, OH) and at YSU's QUEST.

Photos from We are IT were added to the website in addition to new links to related women in computing websites.

We're now preparing for these presentation and getting abstracts and posters ready since OCWIC is about 2 weeks away and QUEST is in April.

survey analysis done!

2007-01-18T16:23:00.000-05:00

well, it's finally all tabulated, percentages calculated, and charts created! although the results are pretty conclusive, I feel there may have been some confusion to the surveyees within those questions by the way they answered some of the questions.

the results will hopefully be uploaded to the website for everyone to see!

I'm looking forward to seeing the pre-conference results as well and comparing it to the post-conference stats compiled!

a little bit more about the analysis

2007-01-04T10:19:00.000-05:00

Thank you Shauna for keeping us up-to-date!
As she mentioned, we are both now tabulating the responses to the We are IT! Surveys so that we can analyze them. My job is to analyze the pre-survey, which was distributed by mail to the female participants in We are IT! Day and returned when they came to the event. The questions I am looking at ask the girls about their previous experience with technology, what they would like to be when they grow up, and how they would describe their skills and strengths.
It will be very useful to observe how girls' perceived abilities correspond to their future career ambitions and interest in IT. I'm also looking forward to (hopefully) observing a shift in general opinion about IT by comparing the aggregate results of the pre-survey to the results of the post-survey that Shauna is examining.

analyzing We Are IT surveys

2006-12-29T11:53:00.000-05:00

I'm at the beginning of the analyzing process for the We Are IT surveys. I started with the survey question: "Where do IT/ computer professionals work?". The answer form was a variety of 12 professions from the IRS to Accounting firms requesting that the surveyee check all that apply. The responses are interesting and varied. It'll be exciting to see what we can discover from the results!
I'll be working to analyze other questions from the survey as well, including what their favorite and least favorite activities were, has the surveyee ever considered a career in IT or related fields, and would the surveyee like a job working w/ computers or technology.

Website Updates

2006-12-22T11:50:00.000-05:00

Well the semester is over but the research and progress hasn't slowed down a bit; if anything, it's only picking up. We distributed the surveys between the two of us and we will be analyzing the data over the break and hopefully come up w/ some trends by the beginning of Spring Semester.

I've also been adding some new links that are related to women in science and information technology to our website in addition to our synopsis we just submitted to CREU. More fun stuff will be added soon like photos!

Girls are IT!

2006-11-20T15:29:00.000-05:00

We are IT had an awesome turn-out and it was a good time hanging out w/ the younger girls and watching them as they discover really "cool" things about computers and the careers involved. I'm interested in seeing the data they turned and how the conference affected their knowledge and perspectives about IT.

On another note, more data posted up on the website (supplied by Dr. Lazar) :
1). Excel Spreadsheet of data from 2001-2005 of females vs males awarded degrees and also specifically computer science degrees.
2). Powerpoint of Enrollment Differences by Gender in Computer Science.

We-Are-IT: A Success!

2006-11-19T23:06:00.000-05:00

I am very happy to report that We are IT Day went very well. The girls were actively engaged and interested in the day's programs. We were fortunate to have quite a few students, alumni, and professionals at the luncheon who sparked some wonderful discussion among the girls.
Now the real fun begins. We collected both pre-and post-surveys from all the girls who attended to assess their knowledge of technology, their interest in someday majoring in computing, etc. We will begin very soon to tabulate the results of those surveys.

Moving right along

2006-11-09T12:11:00.000-05:00

I like the changes on the CREU page, Shauna! Looks awesome.
We are IT! Day is only a week and a day away now. Governor Taft actually made a resolution that November 17, 2006 is "We are IT Day" across Ohio. Our plans for YSU's day are coming together nicely, and it looks like it's going to be a wonderful experience for all the participants.
As Shauna mentioned, we will be getting feedback from that day that will be keeping us very busy. Analyzing that feedback will really help us with this project.

Happenings of Late

2006-11-02T19:04:00.000-05:00

Well, there's lots going on. Louise and Dr. Lazar are working hard with Prof. Phillips to finish organizing the We Are IT conference being held here at YSU in less than 2 weeks; Louise and I have been providing feedback on items such as surveys, mailings, activities, prizes and such. There's still lots to be done though!

I've been working on researching some of the academic world's resources of information on gender differences in computer science. I've put up some of my new findings on the website. I've also done some minor restructuring of the website recently.

General Update

2006-10-27T09:35:00.000-05:00

I'm very pleased to say that we are expecting a large group for We are IT! Day. We are expecting 106 girls and 61 boys. We just ended the registration period yesterday afternoon due to the large number of responses.
Dr. Herbert, YSU's Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, announced recently that he wants to reorganize YSU's College of Arts and Science and Rayen College of Engineering into a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) college and a liberal arts college. We have not yet heard if this initiative will definitely be implemented, but it certainly looks probable. I wonder, if that does indeed occur, how that will affect the CSIS Department's enrollment numbers, particularly its enrollment of females. Perhaps banding all of the STEM Departments under one umbrella will make it easier to recruit females. That might be something interesting for Shauna and I to try to research -- do other colleges/universities that have all the STEM departments organized together have better or worse female enrollment percentages than do schools that have these disciplines separated, as YSU does currently?
Hmmm....

More We-are-IT!

2006-10-08T13:38:00.000-05:00

I'm so glad you like the survey so much, Shauna! Survey Monkey is a great tool, and hopefully we can use it again for the We are IT surveys.
I'm thrilled to announce that I have already received over 50 registration requests from area students for We are IT. Dr. Lazar and Professor Virginia Phillips from the CSIS Department attended another We are IT Day on Friday (10/6) at Edison Community College, so tomorrow they will be reporting back to our YSU We are IT committee. We'll discuss what was effective vs. what was ineffective and how we might apply that to our We are IT Day agenda.
Shauna has put the link to the survey up on our CREU site, and Dr. Lazar will be asking professors in the CSIS Department to have their students fill it out. I'm very excited to start getting responses!

CREU + We are IT!

2006-10-04T15:34:00.000-05:00

The survey Louise created is fabulous. SurveyMonkey did the trick! Good job, Louise! It's long enough to cover the bases and short enough to keep the interest. Speaking of this topic, we are helping out "We Are IT!" with their program that is coming up in November and they seem to not have the same knack as Louise with creating surveys. Fortunate for them, we're helping them chop it down to just the right size. We're also coming up with some super-fun ideas for activities for that day! Although we're facing some problems, I'm sure we'll work through and have a blast!

Survey Monkey!

2006-09-28T17:52:00.000-05:00

Shauna's website looks great!
Shauna and Dr. Lazar suggested that instead of writing all the code myself for the survey processing, I could use a service like that offered free at http://www.surveymonkey.com to creat the survey. I checked out the site, and it looks like that will work very well. Once we have decided exactly what questions to use, I will create the survey with Survey Monkey and Shauna or I can link it off the main page.
As a side note, Shauna also put a link on our CREU page to a page I created separately for an event called "We are IT!" This event is partially sponsored by the Ohio Department of Education. It is a day-long IT extravaganza for middle- and high-school students (we are especially targeting girls) to be held at YSU on November 17. I'm happy to report that 20 students have already registered. Hopefully this event will get more girls interested in majoring in computing!

finito

2006-09-26T01:27:00.000-05:00

The website is finished after all--or at least as finished as websites get (they are always seemingly under construction). I'm having some technical issues w/ the UNIX server and hopefully Dr. Lazar will be able to help clear up the problem and we'll be able to actually view the site.
There are a couple of the sections that are still unfinished: data, survey, etc but they will come with time as we're still working towards those. I'm really excited for the advent of electronic surveys and what it can do for us! Definitely looking forward to it!

First Steps...

2006-09-23T12:41:00.000-05:00

As Shauna wrote, she is working on our CREU website. One thing that we'd really like to do for this project is conduct a survey of CSIS students to find out how they feel about enrollment differences by gender in the CSIS department. I will be working on an HTML form and some attached PHP code so that we can conduct this survey online. Students will fill out the form, and when they click "submit," the PHP code will enable their answers to be sent to a special CREU email that Dr. Lazar, Shauna, and I share. Having the survey in a web-based form will make it easier for students to fill out at their convenience, and then the data will already be in electronic format!

2006-09-20T14:24:00.000-05:00

I've begun the stages of development/design for our new webpage. It will be located at the url: http://cis.ysu.edu/~alazar/creu.html. Hopefully, it will contain all the information regarding this research project, such as our actual document we've submitted, a survey for research purposes and some other miscellaneous links as well. I hope to have a menial page up by this weekend but the way this week is going...we'll see :)

Creating the Blog

2006-09-14T15:48:00.000-05:00

Today I created this blog for the 2006-2007 CREU team at YSU. Blogger makes it very easy to create and edit a blog!
Dr. Lazar, Shauna and I are very excited to get started on this project.