Developing a computational textiles curriculum to increase diversity in computer science

The current culture surrounding computer science is quite narrow, resulting in a participating population that lacks diversity in both gender and interests. The field of computational textiles has shown promise as a domain for diversifying computer science culture by drawing a population with broader, less traditional interests and backgrounds into creating technology; however, little effort has been made to build resources and communities around computational textiles. This thesis presents a curriculum that teaches computer science and computer programming through a series of lessons for building and programming computational textile projects, along with systematic considerations that support the real-world implementation of such a curriculum. In 2011-12, we conducted three workshops to evaluate the impact of our curriculum methods and projects on students' technological self-efficacy. As a result of data obtained from these workshops, we conclude that working with our curriculum's structured computational textile projects both draws a gender-diverse population, and increases students' comfort with, enjoyment of, and interest in working with electronics and programming. Accordingly, we are transforming the curriculum into a published book in order to provide educational resources to support the development of a computer science culture around computational textiles.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Qiu, Kanjun

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Leah Buechley.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/85222

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/85222