During the summer of 2020, Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., of the Wellesley Centers for Women and Catherine Grevet Delcourt, Ph.D., of the Wellesley College Computer Science Department led a remote innovation workshop with 23 middle schoolers on digital wellbeing, identity exploration, and computational concepts related to social computing. During this video abstract from the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Dr. Charmaraman and Dr. Delcourt discuss the structure of the workshop, themes that emerged from discussions, and findings from workshop participants' survey responses.

After participating in the workshop, girls’ self-esteem and agency increased. They reported increases in the importance of sharing about their abilities, achievements, and future career plans online and feeling of belonging in online communities. They also reported an increase in their belief that they are good at computing and that learning about technology will give them many career choices. Overall, participants were less likely to think that computing jobs were boring.

Findings from this study are summarized in a blog post and explored in detail in a paper published in CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

May 7, 2021