Women and Games
Educational games that can both build technology skills and appeal to female interests will result in women and girls being more prepared for the technology classroom.
The designers of The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis explain how the computer game makes math fun for girls and young women, while introducing concepts such as logical relationships, graphing and algebra.
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Hancock, Chris and Scot Osterweil, "Zoombinis and the Art of Mathematical Play," Hands On!, Volume 19, No. 1, Spring 1996. |
A gateway of academic research, Investigaming.com features over 300 articles that help game developers make games that appeal to female players. Carrie Heeter, Project Leader and Editor-in-Chief of Investigaming, describes the benefits of connecting researchers and game designers, and provides examples of how the research can be applied.
In 2007, high school girls at Oakland Tech High School in Oakland, California studied circuitry, bridge building, soldering, toy design, green design and robotics through Techbridge’s science, technology and engineering outreach program. Among the resources used to teach the girls were PicoCricket Kits, which mixes robotics and programming with creativity in design. Read about the program’s positive effects on the girls’ self-confidence and interest in computer programming.
The authors describe how The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, a computer game, uses techniques such as gender-neutral characters and storytelling to help get female and male students interested in higher-level mathematical and strategic thinking.
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Rubin, Andree, Megan Murray, Kim O'Neil, Juania Ashley, "What Kind of Educational Computer Games Would Girls Like?," AERA Presentation, April 1997, TERC 1998. |
A game called Click! Urban Adventure had a big impact on girls ages 11-14 who used Pittsburgh, PA as their game board and STEM skills as their tools. After playing the game, 93% of the girls had a high degree of confidence in their ability to use technology and 78% reported wanting to learn more about the technologies they’d encountered (n=84; 53% were minorities). The girls’ interest in STEM also increased and they recognized the importance of STEM to their education and futures. Read the full paper to find out how the game developers used strategies such as creating team-based experiences for peer groups and leveraging the girls’ existing interests to get these results.
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Hughes, Kristin. "Designing opportunities to spark and nurture scientific inquiry in middle school girls." Proceedings of the 2005 Conference on Designing for User Experience. AIGA: American Institute of Graphic Arts, 2005. |
The WomenTech Educators Training got us thinking intentionally about who we were going to target for outreach, how we were going to target them, and how we would follow up to make sure we had actual results linked to the different programs and events that we were holding. Since then, it has grown organically and blossomed into something that our college just does naturally.
I think getting together as a team with intention—because we're all so busy—and developing a written plan that we could stick to was what made all the difference. I don’t think we would have ever done that if it wasn't for the WomenTech Educators Training.