Khan Academy Promotes Women in Computer Programming

I have been using Khan Academy with my math students with limited success for the past three years.  The videos on Khan Academy are not useful with my English language learner (ELL) students, and the frequent inclusion of word problems in the practice exercises is likewise inappropriate for my students. So while I saw promise in Khan Academy and was delighted that the materials on it were free to use and modify in an educational setting, I did not think it appropriate to use extensively in my classroom.

All that changed on March 18, 2014, when I received an email from Khan Academy that began with the following:

Dear jeff.elkner,

Did you know that just 18% of computer science college graduates are women? That's crazy when you consider that by 2020, the demand for graduates in computer science will be double the available workforce.

But together we can introduce all our students to coding and ensure that female students don't get left behind.

Thanks to Google, U.S. public high school teachers can now earn over $1,000 in DonorsChoose.org funding when their female students complete our Khan Academy coding lesson.
...
For every female U.S. public high school student that completes the tutorial, DonorsChoose.org will send you a $100 giftcode for your classroom. As an extra bonus, they’ll also send you a $500 gift code when four of them are done!

Excited by the generous offer, I logged into Khan Academy to explore the new curriculum (Intro to JS, 2014). I found a new introductory programming course that is interactive, visual, and multilingual, available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The videos that accompany the tutorial are narrated by young, hip sounding female voices, a plesant change from the old white men that have almost exclusively been the faces of programming education in the past.

I had one student in my afternoon web application development class who was the obvious choice to begin exploring the curriculum, since she was already studying the JavaScript that was the focus of the Khan course.  I wanted to go for the $500 bonus, so I still needed to find three other female students willing to do the course.  Asking around, I found the three students - one independent study student, one student aid, and one geometry student willing to come in during lunch to work on the curriculum.

This afternoon, Mayra, the web development student, will complete the curriculum. Yanina and Daniela, the independent study student and student aid, are working together each day as they make their way forward. They are each about half way finished. Carmen, my geometry student, will take longer, since she doesn't have regular class time to work on it.

I've been watching the conversations, and laughs (like when Daniela used JavaScript to put a cat on her plate for breakfast) that Yanina and Daniela have each day as the work through the material.  It is apparent they are enjoying it, and from the quality of the questions they ask me I can tell they are learning. Daniela and Carmen are doing the course in Spanish.  Without this language support, they would not be able to complete it.

Well aware of the disparity between male and female students in computer programming, I've made conscious effort to take affirmative action to get more women into our web development program.  This has resulted in some success, with a dual-enrolled college program the Summer before last with half female students. Last Summer, with less sustained effort, the percentage of women in the Summer program dropped. The difficulties women have in getting into this field are well documented (Margolis, J., & Fisher, A., 2002), and I am committed to doing whatever I can to help make my computer programming classes available and welcoming to underrepresented students.

It is great to see Khan Academy developing what appears to me to be a very successful strategy to begin addressing the issue head on. Our school will now have a group of four female students who have been made to feel special because they introduced themselves to computer programming.  The are quick becoming a "team", sharing stories and supporting each other in learning. I am truly grateful to Khan Academy for making this happen!

References

Intro to JS: Drawing & Animation. (2014). Khan Academy. Retrieved April 22, 2014, from https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/cs/programming

Margolis, J., & Fisher, A. (2002). Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. Cambridge: MIT Press.