Kube, Dana, Gombert, Sebastian, Suter, Brigitte, Weidlich, Joshua, Kreijns, Karel, and Drachsler, Hendrik
Background: Gender stereotypes about women and men are prevalent in computer science (CS). The study's goal was to investigate the role of gender bias in computer‐supported collaborative learning (CSCL) in a CS context by elaborating on gendered experiences in the perception of individual and team performance in mixed‐gender teams in a hackathon. Dataset: The dataset of this study was collected at a 3‐day CSCL hackathon aimed at gaining knowledge on designing educational games. We assigned the 28 participants of the hackathon to mixed‐gender groups and asked them to fill out a questionnaire, including collective self‐esteem scales, before the start. During the hackathon, we again asked the participants to complete team progress evaluation surveys individually after each workday. Lastly, we interviewed 11 participants to elaborate on the quantitative findings with qualitative data. Methodology: We applied an exploratory mixed‐method approach using quantitative survey data at several time points during the hackathon, which was analysed with clustering and descriptive statistics and complemented with qualitative coding of interviews with participants. Results: The results demonstrate that social and psychological aspects of gender are important for understanding the outcomes and perceptions of gender in a CS hackathon. The analysis further suggests that collective self‐esteem can be used as a key variable to assess gender differences in CSCL studies, providing explanatory benefits. More broadly, results gave reason to believe that CSCL in the CS domain currently severely fails to account for gender representation. Interviewed participants raised substantial concerns about the underlying gender stereotypes prevalent in communication, team roles, and work division. We provide recommendations for practitioners seeking to create gender‐inclusive and counter‐stereotypical CSCL and wider, critical proposals for how we, as researchers, can assess gender with appropriate methodologies and interventions in computer science education. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic?: In the field of computer‐supported collaborative learning (CSCL), most studies argue that group work supports the development of social, cognitive, and online collaborative teamwork skills and creates a more inclusive learning environment.Because women represent non‐majority users in CSCL, especially when applied in the computer science domain, this notion is questioned by studies finding that diversity inclusion in CSCL is hampered through gender stereotypes still present in CS and impacts women's and other gender minorities' learning experiences.Another problem is that the role of gender in CSCL research has scarcely been addressed by the CSCL community yet. Thus, research methodologies trying to reveal gender differences seldomly address gender majority‐minority relations in learning in understanding the role of gender in shaping these learning experiences. What this paper adds?: Emerging from this research gap, the main contribution of our study is to investigate the validity and explanatory power of operationalizations of gender that consider gender not as the biological sex of the learner but as a social construct operating in the specific learning context.Thus, we demonstrate the benefits of considering differentiation in gender identity and gender perception to understand differences in individual learning experiences and the role of gender in the context of a CSCL hackathon in computer science education.We draw on an innovative exploratory mixed method design to contribute to the methodological discourse in CSCL research concerning gender. Specifically, we demonstrate how gender differences in perceptions of mixed‐gender groups can be meaningfully operationalised via the social and psychological aspects of gender in CSCL in CS that is gender identity, self‐esteem and belonging in computer science CSCL. The implications of study findings for practitioners: This study gives the following recommendations for CSCL technical and pedagogical designers:(1) Designing with and for women and minority‐specific privacy considerations.(2) Creating gender‐representative and gender‐affirming communication infrastructures, counter‐stereotypical roles in the teams and gender‐balanced group constellation, along with pedagogical and teaching practice that is open for including women's perspectives in grounded and participatory design processes.(3) In terms of CSCL hackathons, I might also consider doing community‐based hackathons that attract women and minorities, for instance, through connecting women and minority non‐profit organisations with student developers, as in "Think Global Hack Local Hackathons". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]