-  Data is from a Python programming course at the University of Michigan in Winter 2018, consisting mostly of students who do not have any experience with programming. 
-  There were efforts to make the course enticing to both male and female students, with female students accounting for 49.8% of enrollments from 2013-2017. 
-  After the course, these female students took second-level programming courses at the same or higher rates than the male students. 

Data & Participants: Speed and Studying: Gendered Pathways to Success

-  A platform that gives authors the ability to make interactive textbooks and instructors to put together assignments from those elements. 
-  Textbook pages can contain several interactive elements with a range of multimedia and question styles. 
-  Students receive feedback immediately upon completing the elements. 
-  The students are graded and the platform also keeps track of student actions, which includes both a timestamp for each page load and a time stamp when each question is submitted. 

The Runestone Interactive Textbook

-  Hours of studying, which included page loads and time spent with the review practice tool. 
-  Speed, which is how fast a student got the correct answers to problem sets. 
-  Earliness, which was an average of the number of hours between the time of completion of a problem set and the deadline for that problem set. 
-  Final exam grade

Measures in Speed and Studying: Gendered Pathways to Success

-  A mediation analysis was done to better understand how gender and exam performance are associated as mediated by Hours of Studying, Speed, and Earliness. 

Model in Speed and Studying: Gendered Pathways to Success

-  Data & Participants
-  The Runestone Interactive Textbook 
-  Measures
-  Model

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

A study was done using a Python programming course at the University of Michigan in winter 2018, consisting mostly of students who do not have any experience with programming. 
-  Background & Purpose
-  Methods
-  Results
-  Discussion
-  Implications

Females spend more time studying while males complete problem sets faster in a computer science course to achieve the same final exam scores. 

Iman YeckehZaare and Paul Resnick. 2019. Speed and Studying: Gendered Pathways to Success. In Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 693–698. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3287324.3287417

Speed and Studying: Gendered Pathways to Success

-  Previous studies have shown a decrease in women enrollment and higher dropouts in classes in the computer science field and decreased involvement in the technology industry. This is concerning and has implications for women, who deal with gender discrimination in technology companies. 
 -  Previous literature has not fully explained whether efforts taken to support female students has affected performance. Also, it is not clear whether there are differences in the study behaviors of males and females. 
-  This study therefore looks into several questions pertaining to the differing study behaviors between males and females. 

Background and Purpose: Speed and Studying: Gendered Pathways to Success

Methods: Speed and Studying: Gendered Pathways to Success

-  The difference in average male and female final exam scores was not statistically significant, even when controlling for activity measures. Yet, there were different pathways to success between the genders. 
-  On average, females spent 12.086 more hours studying the textbook. More time spent studying correlated with higher final exam grades. 
-  On average, males achieved 2.727 more points per hour showing that they completed the problems faster. Speed was also correlated with higher final exam grades. 
-  There was not a significant difference seen between earliness in male and female students, although it was associated with higher final exam grades. 

Results: Speed and Studying: Gendered Pathways to Success

-  This study found that there are multiple pathways to success, which has implications for the way instructors run courses. 
-  Some students succeed with speed which emphasizes the need for available repeated practice. On the other hand, some succeed through developing understanding but less speed.
-  It is important that instructors account for understanding concepts well and developing speed as complementary approaches in that one could make up for the other in students programming. 

Implications: Speed and Studying: Gendered Pathways to Success

- Although some gender differences existed, such as males completing tasks faster and females studying for more hours, there was not a statistically significant difference seen in final exam scores between genders.
- The difference in speed of completing problems did not decrease over time, which means that studying more did not decrease potential initial skill deficits in females.
- It was an interesting finding that there was not a difference between earliness in males and females.

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