A Reflection on Diversity and Inclusivity Efforts in a Software Engineering Program

Abstract

This Innovative Practice Full Paper is an experience report that presents a collection of initiatives, circumstances, and teaching practices that coincide with improvements in gender diversity in the undergraduate software engineering program at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. The percent of females in the software engineering capstone increased from an average of 3.81% in the first five years of the program (2003-2007) to 18.82% in the most recent four years (2014-2017). Multiple initiatives were instituted beginning in 2009 to improve a gender imbalance, addressing recruitment and retention of women. One key initiative was the creation of a new introductory course with multiple themes (e.g. art, mobile, music, robotics) from which incoming students could choose. These courses were designed to include significant collaboration, rapid application development in interesting domains, and strategic selection of tools and languages that reduced the advantages of previous student programming experience. Additional initiatives included club activities, sending large numbers of female students to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference, K-12 outreach, and a vibrant and mature SE capstone experience. Also during this timeframe, course scheduling changes were imposed which naturally created informal cohorts of software engineering students earlier than in previous years. Student self-evaluations collected in the SE capstone were analyzed, comparing male and female responses, as well as teams with different gender mixes. This analysis indicates no significant difference between male and female enjoyment of the capstone projects overall, and no significant difference between team enjoyment regardless of the percentage of females on the team.