The final project for this course will be a presentation ...



Running head: USE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Use of Information Technology among Female Engineering Students

Bettie Hall

18-CI-803 Seminar

University of Cincinnati

Abstract

Female students enrolled in various mechanical and industrial engineering courses at the University of Cincinnati that present course information online were interviewed to discover their satisfaction with the information, the way it has been presented, their desire for changes, and their suggestions for particular remedies. The designs of engineering web pages geared to this population were analyzed to determine whether barriers to equity and gender exist in the elements, layout, and general appearance. Specific changes, technological implementations, and other ideas are suggested to make the access and usage of female engineering students more inviting in an online environment.

Introduction

This paper reports the results of a project that concerns diversity and information technology for a group of female students enrolled in various mechanical and industrial engineering courses that utilize Blackboard as a means of disseminating course information. While there are over 100 engineering students enrolled in this series of courses, only seven are currently female, rendering this group highly marginalized. This is reflected by national statistics; a National Center for Education Statistics (Peter, K., Horn, L. & Carroll, C., 2005) informs us that in 2000-01, only 1.8 percent of degrees awarded to females were in engineering, while 11 percent of the degrees awarded to men were in engineering. The same report provides one clue why such disparity may exist: in 2001, females who majored in engineering earned only 76% of what males with the same degree earned. To add some perspective, the Society of Women Engineers reports that the percentage of students earning engineering degrees who are female was 20.5 percent for bachelor's degrees in 2000, 20.7 percent for master's degrees for 1999, and 16.3 percent for doctoral degrees, and that these percentages represent a continual increase in such degrees for females.

While there are formal programs associated with the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering for recruiting women, such as the Rowe Center for Women in Engineering, and for recruiting minority students, such as the Emerging Ethnic Engineers program, and some information available for international students, there may exist other barriers which may partially explain the low numbers of female and minority students enrolled in engineering programs at the University of Cincinnati. Selected pages from the College of Engineering web site were examined to determine whether the design elements or other aspects of the site might exclude any groups in perhaps non-obvious and unintentional ways. As Herring (2000) states in her article on gender differences in computer-mediated communication, it had long been thought that "…the absence of physical cues as to a message sender's identity was thought to remove all trace of information as to gender, race, social class, etc. from the message, making the medium inherently democratic and egalitarian." (p. 1). However, as Herring later reported, this is not usually the case.

This paper is organized to first, discuss the method used to solicit and obtain information about computer usage of the selected group of female students is described. Next, the data resulting from the interviews is provided. A discussion of the data collected is then presented, along with an investigation into the web sites, this population would be required or most likely to use: the departmental web site and the college web pages as posted on Blackboard. Some alternative web sites are presented. Finally, conclusions are drawn from an analysis of the interviews and web sites used by these students, along with alternatives and suggestions for these course pages and web sites.

Method

Participants. The targeted group comprised seven female engineering graduate students enrolled in a series of mechanical and industrial engineering courses. The students interviewed represented a full range of student levels, from undergraduate to doctoral candidate. All seven students were solicited, and three responded. Of these three, all declined to meet in person for an interview, even when incentives were offered; however, they readily and promptly agreed to provide E-mail responses to questions. The candidate courses involved were 20-MINE-636, -637, -638, and -639. Of the population of students who responded, all three were Asian, two of whom were classified as foreign nationals, and one of whom was a naturalized citizen. The estimated ages of these students ranged from 22 to 40.

The Interview Questions. The first part of the interview questions requested information about the students' grade level, whether they had regular access to a computer, whether they had convenient use of a computer for coursework and for other purposes, and the number of hours they devoted to using the personal computer to perform coursework as opposed to other purposes. The second part of the interview questions focused more on their perceptions and feelings about using a personal computer to perform their particular coursework, and invited more subjective comments, such as what aspect of doing part of their coursework online they enjoyed most, and which aspect they enjoyed least. The interview questions ended with a question about what aspect of the computer they would change to make it more convenient or enjoyable.

The Analysis. Text analysis (Herring, 2004) was used to classify and describe the interview responses, to determine whether they held any consistent themes, references, or structural regularities, while a critical discourse approach was taken for evaluating the web sites.

Results

Data. Quantitative and qualitative data resulted from this interview. Table 1 provides the quantitative and quantifiable data collected from the first half of the interview questions. To protect confidentiality, students have been named Student 1, Student 2, and Student 3, and will be referred to as such throughout the rest of this paper.

| |Level |Regular Access to |Convenient Access to |Average Self-Estimated |Average Self-Estimated |

| | |Computers |Computers (at home and |Hours Per Week Using the |Hours Per Week Using the |

| | | |at school) |Computer |Computer for Coursework |

| | | | | |Only |

|Student 1 |B.S. Computer |Yes |Yes |Over 40 hours |30 hours |

| |Engineering | | | | |

|Student 2 |Ph.D. Mechanical |Yes |Yes |40 hours |20 hours |

| |Engineering | | | | |

|Student 3 |M.S. Industrial |Yes |Yes |40 hours |30 hours |

| |Engineering | | | | |

Table 1. Quantitative data collected from students about computer usage.

Student 2 was the only student to provide a qualification to her response to the estimated number of hours per week using a computer for coursework only by noting, "It depends on what course I took. If I took a computer programming course, I spent more than 30 hours for assignments per week."

The second half of the interview questions solicited qualitative information. The first two questions concerned using computers in general. It was assumed that engineering students would report that they enjoy using computers and other technologies in general, but that they would not be accustomed to answering questions about how they felt about using computers. This indeed turned out to be the case, with most of the answers being terse. The number of words used by the students to describe feelings, instances, or suggestions ranged from a low of five words (to describe a least enjoyable aspect) to a maximum of 38 words (to describe an instance of happiness). Student responses are shown in Table 2.

| |Most Enjoyable Aspect of |Instance of Happiness Using a |Least Enjoyable Aspect of |Suggestions for Improving How |

| |Using a Computer for |Computer to Access Course |Using a Computer to Access|Computers Are Used for Coursework |

| |Coursework |Information |Course Information | |

|Student 1 |Most of my coursework |When a class is canceled or |Sometimes professors do |It would be nice if professors |

| |require[s] using a |changes were made to homework |not post everything on |would post the class notes, |

| |computer such as |or project requirements, it's |their website. |homework, examples from a class |

| |programming. Professor |important for students to know | |and everything we went through in |

| |that post course materials|these changes in a timely | |a class on the internet. |

| |on the internet make it |manner. Using a computer to | | |

| |easier to share |communicate is much better than| | |

| |information with the |any other way. | | |

| |students. | | | |

|Student 2 |I enjoy exploring all the |Dr. Hall is one of my |I have to print course |More interactive, no spam for |

| |possibilities and [it] |professor[s] who used |information myself. |emails. |

| |give[s] me a tool that I |blackboard [sic] for all my | | |

| |can try everything. Well, |courses. I am always happy to | | |

| |whenever I think of |get the course information | | |

| |coursework, there is |online. I can also review the | | |

| |always [something] related|past chapter material. | | |

| |to working with computers.| | | |

|Student 3 |I need not use my |When i [sic] was not able to |Well nothing i [sic] like |It would be better if you could |

| |handwriting for home |attend a class but could access|it. |tape the class and put it up on |

| |work[pic] |the notes from the computer. | |black board. |

Table 2. Qualitative data collected from students about computer usage.

Student 3 was the only respondent who used a playful icon to express emotion (see Table 2); this same student consistently used a lower-case "i" to refer to herself.

Discussion

The responses to interview questions were terse, yet they yielded some interesting information. Examining the content for patterns, it was noted that Student 1, the only undergraduate respondent, consistently wrote in third person, and used objective, mostly passive, declaratives, as in "…it's important for students to know…". Student 1 used complete sentences with two, minor grammar errors. She assumed a nonaggressive stance in suggesting an improvement by beginning her sentence with "It would be nice if…" which might betray her status as someone who prefers persuasion to direction. Student 1's responses ranged from a low word count of nine, to the highest word count in any of the student responses (38). It is worth noting that Student 1 attributes the least enjoyable aspect of using a computer to access course information to "professors" while the other students attribute least enjoyable aspects in reference to themselves.

Student 2, the Ph.D. candidate, used active tense in most of her responses, and wrote in first person, using the word "I" more than any of the other respondents (five times). Her response ranged from a low word count of seven (for reporting unenjoyable feelings) to a high of 32 for reporting an instance of happiness using a computer to access course information. Her patterns of self-identifying demonstrated greater ease in describing her feelings, as in "I enjoy…", "I can…", "I think...", and "I am… ." She used complete sentences with four grammar errors, the most of all the respondents, then switched styles completely for her response to the final question regarding suggestions for improvement. This abrupt change jars the reader and may betray a reluctance to self-identify anything that might be construed as criticism.

Student 3, the master's degree student, also used first person, but used passive tense for most of her responses. She used the least number of words in total, and the least number of words to describe an unenjoyable aspect of using a computer to access course information, and her responses contained three grammar errors. Again, a nonaggressive stance is taken in the suggestion for improvement ("It would be better if…"). As noted previously, this student used the lower-case form of I to self-identify. While this may first appear to be an economy, she did use a capital I when it was used to begin a sentence. She demonstrated the great use of negatives ("not" was used twice, and "nothing" used once), and the fewest total words (48).

The responses in general show a lack of adverbs, adjectives, and other demonstrations of comfort using language, although the low number of words may prevent any useful generalizations. The greatest verbosity (a total of 87 words) among the responses occurred in describing an instance of happiness using a computer to access course information. Providing specific information appeared to allow the respondents greater comfort in providing a response. The least verbosity (a total of 21 words) occurred in describing a least enjoyable aspect of using a computer to access course information. This arouses some curiosity, as the question was intended to invite comparison to other was of accessing course information, such as collaborating with other students, or meeting with the instructor face-to-face, or telephoning or E-mailing a fellow student.

In an effort to understand how female students enrolled in these challenging engineering courses might feel, to determine to what extent they may be representative of all female engineering students in the department, and to gain greater understanding of the lack of willingness to meet personally and engage in face-to-face communication, the web pages of the web pages for both their Department and their courses were examined.

The University of Cincinnati Department of Mechanical, Industrial, and Nuclear Engineering web site for undergraduates () features three illustrations (see Figure 1). The most prominent pictures three males in a boxy laboratory interacting with measurement equipment (note that the male instructor pictured is no longer with the University of Cincinnati. The full-color photograph shows a laboratory that is painted white, with a wooden trench for a table and two gray, metal shelves above the table. The equipment is gray or white and black. In contrast, the warm golden hues of the wood and the blue shirt worn by the instructor provide the only relief from starkness.

[pic]

Figure 1. The Mechanical, Industrial and Nuclear Engineering web page at the University of Cincinnati ().

As can be seen in Figure 1, the photographs appeared to be captioned, but the captions read vertically and horizontally, making them difficult to read or to attribute to any one photograph. Only after reading all of the labels does it become clear that these are not photograph labels or captions at all, but subject topics of mechanical, industrial, and nuclear engineering, without punctuation or clear separators, or apparent order or logic. Instead, beginning at the upper left and reading down, then across the bottom, then down again on the right run the words "Fluids Heat Transfer Kinematics & Design Manufacturing Design Vibrations Thermodynamics Controls," all in red, bold text. The second photograph, again full color, shows a dark room with a male to one side of a gigantic, dull green screen. The screen appears to have some sort of equation or graph, but the entire photograph is too dark to easily discern any elements. The third photograph shows a red and white racing vehicle, with only the legs of male students standing behind the car in the background (no bodies or heads are shown). The left side of the screen depicts the index for the web site in vertical format, as Department Head, Undergraduate, Graduate, Research, People, Design Clinic, News, Courses, Alumni, Laboratories, Organizations, News Letter (sic), Open Positions, and Information. All the text is capitalized, in small, white text on a dark purple box-shaped background which turns a dull olive green with selected. The list is not arranged in an alphabetical order, leaving the reader to wonder why the topics are arranged thus.

At the bottom of the page are four additional topics, Admissions/Registration, College Resources, Departments, and Utilities, again in all capital, small white text, this time on black backgrounds, which on hover display index boxes in varying hues. This variation in color was quite exciting upon discovery, but when topics on the mustard, purple, spring green, and dusty blue boxes are selected, the same, dull olive green displayed. Again, none of the lists portray topics in any apparent order, leaving the reader to wonder if topics were simply listed at random or as they were added in various versions of the page, which, we are to learn, was last updated three years ago.

The only colors present on the web site are red for text and black for box-shaped backgrounds. No females are included in any of the photographs, and even though the page carries a copyright notice and date of 2005, it also clearly proclaims on the lower left corner that it was: "Last Updated: Apr. 16, 2002."

To determine to what extent people are depicted on any of the links, each topic was selected and the first page observed. The first link, "Department Head," provides a photograph of the male currently holding that position. The next link, "Undergraduate," provides a photograph of a classroom darkened by white shades drawn over vast windows, as shown in Figure 2. The students appear to be all males, with heads bent down over papers at their desks. One student in a white shirt stands out from the rest, and appears to be talking to or about to speak to a student next to him or her. The photograph as a whole is too dark to discern gender. Again, there is no caption that might offer the reader any clues as to what the photograph is depicting.

[pic]

Figure 2. The Undergraduate Studies in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering web page ().

The next link, "Graduate," provides no photograph. The next link, "Research," illustrates a red car on lifts, with two, gray-haired men in the foreground. One is seated, with a keyboard on his lap, and the other is standing, facing away from the viewer, and appears to be looking at an instrumentation console. The seated male is dressed in a blue shirt and khaki pants, while the standing male is dressed in black or very dark pants and jacket. The entire scene, which again is full color, shows a proliferation of sand, cement, and metal. The car and a gearbox of some sort are painted red, which make them stand out in the photograph as the only relief from gray and black.

The next link, "People," provides four, clearly labeled photographs (heads and torso only) of a single person arranged in a square. Reading from left to right, top to bottom, the labels (this time in dark blue, large font lettering) and people (only somewhat darkened) are "Mechanical Engineering Faculty," with a gray-haired, mustached white male wearing a red tie and brown sport coat, standing in front of a shelf of books; "Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Faculty," with a younger-looking, black-haired Asian male wearing a black sport coat with a red print tie, standing in front of the same shelf of books; "Nuclear Engineering and Health Physics Faculty," with a middle-aged, red-haired male in a red shirt and black print tie holding some mechanism in a disorganized, boxy laboratory; and "Department Staff," with a youthful, African American female wearing a black dress or blouse and wearing red lipstick, standing in front of that now-familiar shelf of books.

Any female happening on this site and wanting to know about the people of engineering might easily assume that only middle-aged, white and Asian men are faculty, and they are served by attractive, youthful, African American females. The Asian and African American are smiling broadly, showing white teeth and happy, cooperative expressions. The two white males who represent the dominant culture are unsmiling, although the red-shirted man appears to be talking or grimacing. Upon investigation of each of the embedded links, one learns that there is one female faculty member, and she appears to be of Asian descent, and that there are five white male and four other white female staff members. The selection, therefore, of the one African American female to represent "Department Staff" raises the question of why one of the middle-aged, white women or men was not featured, since the majority was represented in faculty.

The next nine index items, "Design Clinic," "News," "Courses," "Alumni," "Laboratories," "Organizations," "News Letter," "Open Positions," and "Information," offer no photographs. All offer text, while "Information," the one link for which one might reasonably have hoped to find a great deal more about the department, offers only a link to download the current "Telephone List" for the "Department of mechanical engineering" ("mechanical engineering" is not capitalized). There is no search capability on the entire web site except under the topic, "Utilities," and the option of "UC Search," is offered.

To find anything about females in engineering from this web site, the user can enter "female engineers" as a search parameter. The first two links that appear take the searcher to the Rowe Center for Women in Engineering, which is not listed on the departmental engineering page. Here we find a comparative garden of colors, although red again seems prominent, and four navigational aids running the perimeter of the page, as shown in Figure 3. The top of the page features five navigational tabs with embedded photographs: "Prospective Students" features a smiling, white, young female; "Current Students" features two, boxy, golden buildings; "Faculty + Staff" features what appears to be a bright purple molecular or polymeric structure; "Friends + Alumni" depicts four males (too dark to clearly distinguish features, but three appear to be white, middle aged men in golf shirts, with one African American male); and "College News" depicts a banquet room with four, smiling, young, attractive African American females in glamorous white gowns, jewelry, and carefully groomed hair. The viewer is left to wonder whether these depict actual engineers or whether engineering involves anything other than dressing up and dining, or smiling into cameras.

Upon revisiting this page, one notices that the photographs have changed: there are actually five photographs that randomly appear under "Prospective Students:" three depict males working with equipment, and two depict females--the single female previously described (her hands are behind her back), and the other depicting four, smiling girls with arms linked. The lack of technology associated with females is striking, while "Current Students" are all safely celled within the three buildings that are pictured.

[pic]

Figure 3. Results from entering "female engineer" in the search parameter box ().

In an effort to focus further on the interviewed students' experiences, the specific course web pages for which the interviewed subjects were enrolled were also examined to determine whether there existed a similar lack of people-friendliness. These are shown in Figures 4 through 6. Because the course pages are limited to some extent by predetermined templates, this analysis will focus on those elements that are optional or used at the designer's discretion.

The first course pictured is for Introduction to Robotics, an undergraduate course attended by Student 1. The entry page depicts an anthropomorphic robot that calls to mind a mythic R2D2, small and unthreatening (see Figure 4). There is about this photograph something reassuring in that it cannot be identified as gender- or ethnic-specific.

[pic]

Figure 4. The 636 Introduction to Robotics course page on Blackboard ().

The next course page examined is for Robot Controls, a graduate level course attended by Student 2. The robot depicted on this page has more much more realistic look, and the student learns that this is, in fact, an autonomous vehicle designed and built by engineering students (see Figure 5). While the first robot might be only amusing, this one calls to mind Haraway's warning that "Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert." (Haraway, 1991, p. 153).

[pic]

Figure 5. The 637 Robot Controls course page on Blackboard ().

In contrast to other course pages, the course page for the Robot Design course attended by Student 3 features a large, clear photograph of students (six males and one female) and a gray-haired, male instructor standing around a robot. The lone female stands to the left of the group, on the outside, and she is smiling, along with two of the male students. While one might reasonably assume that these are students enrolled in this course, these are actually student members of the University of Cincinnati Robot Team, an official University of Cincinnati student organization with its own web site. However, some of the students actually were enrolled in associated course, and the instructor pictured is the actual instructor.

[pic]

Figure 6. The 638 Robot Design Course web page on Blackboard ().

All three of the courses in which the female students were enrolled have the same Blackboard features: Announcements, Course Information, Syllabus, Course Documents, Assignments, Web Resources, Student Tools, Communication, and E-Reserves. While Course Information, Syllabus, Course Documents, Assignments, and Web Resources were consistently well populated, the last three of which were consistently blank or empty. None of the pages investigated included any Discussion forums under Student Tools, Discussion Board, or Communication. The Course Documents page contained files of every lecture, which consisted of either PowerPoint presentations, movies, or documents. The Assignments page listed all assignments, as well as due dates. The Web Resources for each course provided numerous links designed to pique student interests.

The lack of any online discussion on any of the course web pages may indicate a lack of interest on the part of both the instructor and the students in computer-mediated discussion. The lack of interest on the part of the students may be deduced because none of the females mentioned a lack of any online discussion, nor did they suggest it as a means of improving utilization. It might be that past aggression against marginalized groups by the dominant male culture has rendered the current female student population reluctant to use this forum to discuss class topics. Herring (2000) argues that "women were more likely than men to react aversively to aggression in online interaction, including falling silent… ." (p. 1). She also argues that reports that women on the Internet have been targets of male intimidation, harassment and sexual deception. As Herring points out, such disparity could not exist if the medium of online discussion rendered gender invisible.

The analysis of the course web pages, and particularly the department web site, produced some clues for why female engineering students enrolled in these courses might feel their voices are small. However, there may also exist a relationship between the low context communication patterns present in these engineering web sites and the lack of female participation and presence. Stewart, Shields, & Sen (2001) reported "striking differences" in communication patterns by gender and culture (p. 180) that suggest that the online environment may not always be conducive to females or non-Americans owing to its lack of contextual factors. The term "context" refers to "the degree to which the meaning of a message can be abstracted from the situation in which it was produced and received" (Heaton, 2001, p. 231).

Another possible clue might be harassment or negative experiences of these female engineering students in a computer-mediated environment in the past. In an informal discussion, one of the females noted, "I don't feed trolls and I don't eat spam." One definition of trolling that has been offered a practice of "luring others into pointless and time-consuming discussions" (Herring, Job-Sluder, Scheckler, and Barab, n.d., p. 1). At best, trolling wastes time and consumes space, and at worst, it can cause loss of trust. Herring, et al. (n.d.) examined the reactions of an online group to trolling, and reported that the harassment was successful because it played on the tensions between individual freedom of expression and the safety of the group on the other. In that same article, the researchers reported several different types of intimidation by the "troller", namely ideological manipulation, and analyzed why the group was ineffective in managing or controlling the harassment, and concluded that the conflict of ideologies was taken advantage of by the troller by "pushing the bounds of harassing behavior, at the same time invoking principles of free speech and open debate."

In contrast to the web and course pages shown here, a number of more multicultural, race- and gender-sensitive engineering school web sites were investigated to determine what design elements might be more inviting to females. These sites are shown in Figures 7 through 9.

The first site, titled Engineer Girl!, appears to be targeting pre-teen and teenage girls. Again, there is a noticeable lack of photographs depicting females actually using or handling technology--most of the photographs are of smiling, happy women and girls who are doing nothing. The "Women Engineers" link features a total of three female engineers in mechanical, chemical, and biomedical fields.

[pic]

Figure 7. The National Academy of Science's attempt to attract girls to engineering ().

A second site, the home page for the Society of Women Engineers, shown in Figure 8, is clearly targeting a more mature audience, but it again features many smiling, happy faces of women doing nothing. There is no technology depicted (except for one photograph of a woman handling a book), no photographs of women standing beside their creations.

Figure 8. The Society of Women Engineers web site ().

Finally, a third site was examined, the home page for Women in Engineering Organization, shown in Figure 9. This site was the only one to depict any modern technologies with women actively participating in their operation. This collaboration of commercial and educational sponsors offers some information on scholarships and opportunities for each of the audiences it targets: Girls, Parents, K-12 Teachers, Guidance Counselors, College Women, College Faculty, Industry, and Project Directors.

[pic]

Figure 9. The Women in Engineering Organization home page ().

Conclusions

It would be difficult to imagine a design that would suit every woman's perspective. As Haraway (1991) writes, "It has become difficult to name one's feminism by a single adjective -- or even to insist in every circumstance upon the noun. Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic. With the hard-won recognition of their social and historical constitution, gender, race, and class cannot provide the basis for belief in 'essential' unity (p. 156)." The greater affinity may be among professions, forming a stable community that offers harbor to females who find themselves drowning in male-dominated programs. Herring, Martinson, and Scheckler (2002) reasonably ask what it would take to design a system that "effectively fosters community" (p. 1) in their findings of an web site (Inquiry Learning Forum) for faculty and graduate students. They point out that "the gender and design question takes on new dimensions…with the introduction of multimodal CMC" (computer-mediated communication) (p. 2). They point out that "graphical interfaces such as the Web are similar to other interfaces for which gender differences have been found in user color preferences, navigational strategies, and persistence of use in the face of technical difficulties" (p.2). They also point out the need for role models for both genders, since teachers model "behaviors on those of people whom it would be appropriate for us [to] emulate" (p. 9).

This investigation can do no better than to use the recommendation of helping website and course page creators to be "gender-sensitized," and to guard against the "naturalization" of gender-biased designs (p.10). In the case of course web pages under investigation, the designers would do well to heed the admonitions echoed by Herring, et al. (2002), and design their pages careful against "unwittingly contributing to patterns of dominance in society by perpetuating gender bias in the representation of images, language, and content" (p.2).

References

Haraway, D. (1991) A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century," in Simians, cyborgs and women: The reinvention of nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181. Retrieved 5/25/05 from .

Herring, S., Job-Sluder, K., Scheckler, R., and Barab, S. (n.d.) Searching for safety online: Managing "trolling" in a feminist forum. CSI Working Paper No. WP-02-03. Retrieved 6/5/05 from .

Herring, S., Martinson, A. & Scheckler, R. (2002). Designing for community: The effects of gender representation in videos on a web site. IEEE Proceedings of the 35th Hawaiian International Conference on System Sciences - 2002. Retrieved 5/26/2005 from .

Herring, S. (2000). Gender differences in CMC: Findings and implications. The Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) Newsletter, 18(1), (Winter, 2000). Retrieved 5/26/2005 from .

Herring, S. (2004) Computer-mediated discourse analysis: An approach to researching online behavior. In Barab, S., Kling, R., & Gray. J. (Eds.). Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning. New York: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 6/03/04 from .

Stewart, C., Shields, S. & Sen, N. (2001). Diversity in on-line discussions: A study of cultural and gender differences in listservs. In Ess, C. (Ed.) Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an international global village. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Heaton, L. (2001). Preserving communication context: Virtual workspace and interpersonal space in Japanese CSCW. In Ess, C. (Ed.) Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an international global village. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Peter, K., Horn, L. & Carroll, C. (2005). Gender differences in participation and completion of undergraduate education and how they have changed over time. National Center for Education Statistics: Postsecondary education descriptive analysis reports. U.S. Department of Education: Institute of Education Sciences. NCES 2005-169. Available: .

Earned bachelors degrees in engineering by gender. (2005). Chicago: The Society of Women Engineers. Available: .

Appendix

The Interview Questions

1. What degree are you pursuing?

2.  Do you have regular access to a computer?

3.  If no to Question (2), how do you complete assignments

or access information that is posted online for the course?

4.  If yes to Question (2), where is the PC that you use to

do your coursework located?

5.  How many hours per week would you say you use a computer?

6.  How many hours per week would you say you use a computer

for coursework only?

7.  What do you enjoy the most about using a computer for

your coursework?

8.  Tell me about a time when you were really happy you

could access your course information on a computer.

9.  What do you enjoy the least about using a computer to

access your course information.

10. If there were one thing you could change about how

computers are used for your course, what would it be?

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