Helping students get IT: Investigating the longitudinal impacts of IT school outreach in Australia

Abstract

Australia is facing a shortfall in the number of appropriately skilled ICT workers needed for Australia’s future workforce. One avenue to address this issue is for universities and stakeholders to conduct initiatives to attract prospective students to ICT courses, by building self-efficacy and positive attitudes towards ICT careers. Previous gender-focused interventions have reported immediate positive effects in female students’ attitudes and confidence towards IT. There have been, however, no longer-term measures of the longitudinal changes of both male and female students’ attitudes and self-efficacy towards IT from such interventions. This research sought to investigate and compare the longitudinal effects of three different levels of interventions for IT upon primary school-aged students’ attitudes and self-efficacy towards computer programming and their interest to pursue programming. Immediate positive effects were generated by each of these interventions, which is consistent with previous research. A major finding of this research was that these immediate positive effects fade out over the following two school terms. This effect is significant with respect to students’ interest in pursuing programming. This is a novel finding revealed by the longitudinal nature of this research project. Interest and self-efficacy behaved differently over time. While self-efficacy still incurred some fade-out over the two terms, the residual benefit after two school terms was that students’ enhancement in self-efficacy had been retained above their initial baseline measures. Findings also indicate that the interventions may have different effects based on gender.