Encouraging Participation in Computer Science with CONNECT

Session F2H

Encouraging Participation in Computer Science with CONNECT Brandon Vargo, Cyndi Rader, Tracy Camp Colorado School of Mines, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract - Although professional networking is vital to career building, college-age students may not have acquired sufficient skills to network effectively. Several conferences, such as the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) of Women in Computing and the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, now exist to counteract feelings of isolation and encourage participation of women and minorities in computer science. To enable conference attendees to take full advantage of the potential for mentoring at these events, we have developed CONNECT (Creating Open Networks aNd Expanding Connections with Technology), a technology-based system that helps conference attendees meet and exchange information. This paper reports the results of deploying the CONNECT system at the GHC conference on two different years. Although the results were generally positive, with about 75% of the survey respondents indicating they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the support provided by CONNECT, there were also a number of suggestions for improvement. We review these results and provide a list of guidelines for creating an effective tool to encourage conference attendees, especially college students, to network and form communities. Index Terms – Communication, Education, Networking INTRODUCTION Based on U.S. Census Bureau reports from 2009, females comprise 50.7% of the U.S. population, and approximately one third of the U.S. population is from a minority group [1]; however, only a small percentage of women and underrepresented minorities earn degrees in computer and information science [2][3]. We know a lack of role models, a lack of mentoring, a lack of feeling like one belongs, and a lack of a supportive community are all barriers to participation in computing. In other words, women and minorities in computing departments and organizations often feel isolated (e.g., [4][5]). Mentoring has been proposed as one strategy to encourage participation of women and minorities in computing (e.g., [6]-[11]). Additionally, several conferences, such as the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) for Women in Computing and the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, now exist to help overcome feelings of isolation. These conferences aim to recruit undergraduate and master's students into advanced

degrees while helping retain students in all degree programs in computing [12]. Attendees of these conference, whether a large venue such as GHC or a small venue such as the Colorado Celebration of Women in Computing, consistently state that the feeling of support from members of the larger under-represented community and the networking opportunities that occur at these conferences are extremely valuable (e.g., [13][14]). Such events have the potential to have a real impact on attendees, such as the Hispanic student in [15] who talks about her life-changing experience of attending a national convention and seeing herself in the faces around her. Professional networking is vital to career building. In fact, entire books are dedicated to teaching people how to network effectively (e.g., [16][17]). If there are additional barriers to networking beyond those that normal people experience, then succeeding in the professional world can be even more challenging. According to Bernardo Carducci, director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University, about 40% of all adults say they are shy [18]. People who suffer from shyness experience difficulty meeting people, initiating and maintaining conversations, and interacting in small groups. Given this high rate of shyness, simply attending conferences with other women or under-represented communities is not enough for an individual to feel a sense of community. These students actually benefit from technology-based systems designed to help with the networking process, for example by providing tips for initiating conversations, identifying conference attendees with similar interests, and providing an easy mechanism to exchange contact information. Social networking games could also be effective in this context, and may even be used more broadly to encourage interaction among students and professors in a university setting [19][20]. The CONNECT (Creating Open Networks aND Expanding Connections with Technology) project is concerned with developing and deploying technology to be used at events such as GHC, with the goal of reducing or removing the barriers that hinder participation. The goals of the project are to leverage technology to (1) assist a conference attendee's ability to make relevant personal connections at a conference, (2) assist a conference attendee's ability to find and cultivate a mentoring relationship, and (3) assist members of under-represented populations to form communities. In this paper, we examine the results from the deployment of the CONNECT system at the Grace Hopper

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Session F2H Celebration (GHC) of Women in Computing in 2008 and 2009. We first describe the CONNECT system in more detail, look at what aspects of the system helped attendees best meet their networking goals, and, finally, explore ideas to improve the system and increase its effectiveness. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION Participation in CONNECT is voluntary. As part of the registration process, conference attendees were asked whether they wished to participate in a professional networking activity that would share their contact information with people they met at the conference. Those who chose to participate were asked to specify their networking goals, including who they wanted to meet (i.e., types of attendees), and their main area of interest. The CONNECT system categorized people by "Affiliation," such as undergraduate students, Ph.D. students, professors, software engineers, recruiters, etc. Interest areas were used to specify domains within computer science, such as algorithms, data mining, and human computer interaction. During the conference, each CONNECT attendee had a barcode printed on their conference badge; attendees could also attach a ribbon to their conference badge that helped classify that person's role at the conference (e.g., faculty ribbons were yellow). In addition, there were several CONNECT scanner volunteers, each wearing a brightly colored shirt, spread throughout the conference. When a group of participants wanted to record a connection, they signaled for a CONNECT scanner to scan the barcodes on their badges. Each scan included the IDs of all participants along with the time of the connection. At the end of each conference day, attendees received a motivational email. These emails contained contact information for people with whom the attendee had already connected as well as information about other people that the attendee should try to meet the next day, generated using the results of the attendee's initial survey. Due to privacy concerns, attendees only received full contact information for people with whom they had actually made connections; recommendations only included a name and a link to the person's public profile. The email also included a reminder of the initial goals established during the registration process, an indication of progress the attendee had made achieving their goals, and several networking tips, such as how to start a conversation. At the conclusion of the conference, each CONNECT participant received a final email containing a list of all the connections the CONNECT system had recorded for that participant, including a formatted list of contact information for each person who had opted to share their contact information. This list was in the format of a CSV file in order to facilitate easy importation into an address book. METHOD

system. The first question included six subparts that asked survey takers how many times they engaged in various activities, such as searching for other participants with a particular badge ribbon, being approached by others seeking their badge ribbon color, or contacting people after the conference ended. The second question used a Likert scale to solicit users' perceptions of nine aspects of the CONNECT system, such as whether the affiliations were adequate, whether the daily emails were helpful, and whether they felt comfortable contacting participants they met at the conference. The third question used a Likert scale to ask about overall satisfaction with the CONNECT system. In the final question, users provided open-ended feedback. Based on feedback from GHC08, the affiliation categories were refined and participants were given the opportunity to upload a picture to share with other conference attendees. The survey for GHC09 included the four questions mentioned previously. Additional questions were asked to determine whether users found the inclusion of pictures in the CONNECT system to be valuable, to determine what types of follow-up activities users had pursued, and to ask whether the participants considered themselves to be introverts or extroverts. For the GHC08 conference, 610 attendees completed the CONNECT questions and 258 attendees answered the open-ended question. For GHC09, 243 attendees completed the survey, with 103 answering the open-ended question. (Unlike GHC08, the GHC09 CONNECT survey was separate from the conference survey and was sent to attendees weeks after the conference survey). Answers to the closed-response and Likert scale questions are reported in the Results section as percentages. In general, the survey results for the two conferences are similar. Thus, we report the GHC08/GHC09 results separately for only a few questions, in order to show the consistency between conferences. Open-ended comments are generally not linked to a specific conference, since there was also a good deal of commonality between the two. RESULTS In this section, we present the survey results and relate them to our goal of encouraging conference attendees, especially students, to meet others and exchange contact information. Level of Participation Choosing to participate is important. For GHC08, 82% of those who answered the survey indicated they had chosen to participate in CONNECT. To respect conference attendees' privacy, when people who had not chosen to participate were scanned, only their names were shared with others (i.e., no contact information was listed). In the open-ended comments for GHC08, a number of respondents complained that they had scanned connections with people who had not elected to participate in CONNECT. Clearly identifying whether attendees had chosen to participate would help to address this concern.

Email invitations were sent asking conference attendees to answer questions about the conference. The survey for GHC08 included four questions related to the CONNECT 978-1-61284-469-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE October 12 - 15, 2011, Rapid City, SD 41st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference F2H-2

Session F2H Affiliations and Badges To assess whether the affiliations were useful, survey takers were asked how many times they met others with an affiliation they hoped to meet, how many connections they made based on the category displayed on the badge, and whether the affiliation options were adequate. CONNECT participants were generally able to meet other attendees in the affiliation categories of interest. For GHC08, only 9% of participants indicated they did not meet anyone in a category they were hoping to meet. The majority of attendees that year (52%) met from 3 to 10 others in their desired category, and 14% indicated they met more than 10. These results improved in GHC09, with only 5% indicating they did not meet anyone in a category of interest, 49% met from 3 to 10 others and 19% met more than 10, as shown in Figure 1.

FIGURE 1 NUMBER OF ATTENDEES MET IN AN AFFILIATION OF INTEREST DURING GHC09

attendees at GHC09 agreed that the categories allowed them to specify people they wanted to meet. One issue related to the badges was the granularity of the colored ribbons. Although the CONNECT system had roughly 27 categories for affiliation, there were only five ribbon colors. One person noted that "I wanted to meet PhD students and was told to look for the blue colors only to find that masters and undergrads were blue, too." There was also some confusion about the purpose of the badges. One person identified this issue as: "At first, it was not clear whether the CONNECT badge category was supposed to be my category, or the category of the persons that I most wanted to connect with." Another person stated: "I only realized that the colored stickers on the badges were related to the CONNECT project on the last day!" Individual Factors According to the self-reports, 44% of the respondents from GHC09 flagged down a scanner 3-10 times, and 10% flagged down a scanner more than 10 times. To better understand who is benefitting most from CONNECT, these response rates were correlated with affiliations [21]. The two categories with the greatest level of participation were those with the designation of Developer/IT, with 63% of these people making 3-10+ connections, and students, with 61% of students making 3-10+ connections. Faculty/Researchers lagged behind these two groups, with only 40% in the 3-10+ range. Managers/Executives had the lowest rate, with only 16% in that range. For the GHC09 survey, participants were asked whether they considered themselves to be externally focused, i.e., energized by being around people, or internally focused, i.e., energized by time for reflection. We hypothesized that those who identified as internally focused (i.e., an introvert) might benefit more from this type of system than an extrovert. Introversion or extraversion did not appear to be a significant factor, however, as 52% of introverts and 57% of extraverts made 3-10+ connections. It is possible that the CONNECT system provided an increased sense of safety when initiating conversations. It is also possible that other individual factors, such as being shy, which is not the same as being introverted, are more relevant. These questions require more exploration before we will be able to make any definitive claims.

Having the affiliations on the badges (i.e., the colored ribbons) was beneficial for some participants, but not others. The majority of participants indicated that they did not meet other participants because they were looking for specific badge ribbons (60% for GHC08, 51% for GHC09). For a subset of participants, however, the badge categories appeared to be very effective. For GHC09, 26% of the participants approached another person based on badge category 1-2 times, 16% approached others 3-10 times, and 6% approached more than 10 others. The limited use of affiliations by some participants may be due, in part, to the affiliation options. When asked if the affiliations were adequate for describing themselves, 55% of the attendees at GHC08 agreed or strongly agreed, and the same percentage agreed (45%) or strongly agreed (10%) that the categories were adequate to describe the type of Maintaining Connections people they wanted to meet. The open-ended responses about CONNECT provide more insight. For GHC08, 12% Although encouraging attendees to meet and talk to others of the open-ended comments were related to affiliations during the conference is a worthwhile goal in itself, contact and/or badges. Issues identified regarding affiliations after the conference is an important facet. When asked include: people who fit into more than one category, people whether they would be comfortable contacting CONNECT who did not match any category, general comments that the participants they had met at the conference, 68% of the categories were either too broad or too limited, and that GHC08 and 61% at the GHC09 conference attendees there just were not enough people with the desired category indicated they were. When asked how many times they had attending the conference. Based on this feedback, prior to actually contacted people they met via CONNECT, GHC09 we refined the categories somewhat and allowed however, 62% of survey respondents from GHC08 indicated participants to select more than one affiliation. These none. Only 2% of survey respondents indicated they had changes resulted in 62% stating that the categories were contacted people they met via CONNECT more than 10 adequate for themselves; however, only 50% of the 978-1-61284-469-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE October 12 - 15, 2011, Rapid City, SD 41st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference F2H-3

Session F2H times, with 11% contacting others from 3-10 times and 25% either once or twice. Although these numbers seem disappointing, we do not know how they compare to postconference communication when people exclusively exchange business cards. The open-ended comments may again provide some insight regarding the lack of contact after the conference. For example, one respondent indicated: "I do have reservations about being inundated with requests to meet from strangers. Hopefully that will not occur. I do have the intention of saying, 'No,' when contacted if needed to control load." A related issue was the use of CONNECT to scan a large group of people. One attendee indicated: "… at the end of one of the sessions, a scanner scanned everyone in attendance. This messed up the organization of my connections because I hadn't met some of the people in the room…." The survey for GHC09 included a question to ascertain how participants had used the connections made at the conference. Participants were given a list of actions and asked to check all that apply. Table I shows the percentages for each action, listed in order from most to least frequent response.

CONNECT described in this paper used barcode scanners to quickly read and store badge numbers. Although this worked well in some situations, a number of issues were identified. Participants were quite willing to flag down scanners, as 76% of CONNECT participants at GHC09 did flag down scanners, including 8% who flagged down scanners more than 10 times. The availability of scanners was identified as a significant issue, however, as 57% of the participants indicated they had looked for scanners from 110 times and were not able to find one, and 9% indicated they unsuccessfully looked for scanners more than 10 times. The use of scanners was the most frequent source of feedback in the open-ended comments, as 51% of the comments from GHC08 and 48% of the comments from GHC09 were related to scanning issues. The open-ended comments indicated a sense of frustration with the technology and provided a number of suggestions. Although many of the comments suggested ways to improve the use of scanners, such as allowing each attendee to have a scanner or providing fixed scanner stations, a number of the comments proposed alternate technologies such as RFID badges, an iPhone app, or a technology that allowed people to connect by touching badges together, similar to Bump.

TABLE I HOW PARTICIPANTS USED CONNECT FOLLOWING GHC09 Contacted a person to keep in touch 35% Nothing 25% Sought or provided career advice 22% Sought or provided job opportunities 20% Sought or provided academic advice 18% Nothing yet but I plan to 17% Sought or provided collaboration on projects 13% Sought or provided educational opportunities 10% Made social plans 10% Other 3%

General Reaction

Although many of the respondents indicated they made effective use of the connections, 25% indicated they did nothing with them. One potential issue is that a participant may not remember someone on their list of contacts and may, therefore, hesitate to contact that person. For example, one person commented that: "At times I met 3 to 4 people at the same dinner table and wanted to CONNECT with them for different reasons. If there were a way to mark the reason for the connection, that would have made the connections more useful." The comments also included potential extensions. A number of respondents mentioned that they would prefer to export their connections to LinkedIn or Facebook. Several mentioned that they would like to be able to import the connections into their own address book. Although the list of connections was supplied as a CSV file, this was not adequate for, or not noticed by, some participants. Scanners A stated goal of CONNECT is to leverage technology to increase conference attendees' ability to achieve their networking goals. An important question then is whether we are using the appropriate technology. The version of

The survey included three questions to gauge the general reaction to the CONNECT system. Results from GHC09 are shown in Table II. TABLE II SUMMARY OF GENERAL REACTION TO CONNECT FROM GHC09 Question Positive / Neutral Negative / Very Very Positive Negative Given the opportunity, I would 76% 13% 5% participate in CONNECT again. I would recommend CONNECT 79% 14% 7% to other persons hoping to network at a conference. Overall, how satisfied are you 76% 0 24% with the support CONNECT provided you with your networking goals?

Although the general reaction to CONNECT was positive, a number of respondents were not completely satisfied with the support provided for achieving networking goals. The open-ended questions provide insight. For example, one person stated: "It would have been great to have a goals section. I wanted to meet people with similar goals which didn't necessarily correspond with an affiliation or category." A number of participants indicated that area of interest was more important than affiliations, for example: "I think it isn't so much that my goals were to meet these classes of people but that I was open to meeting anyone that was also interested in the same area of study as me, in which I would like to see a larger community of women leadership." Another suggestion was to have a category for people from the same geographical area, since: "Networking with people that one can meet in person is also valuable."

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Session F2H A few respondents indicated that the concept of affiliations and the structured goal setting were not useful, for example: "I didn't use the badge categories, but did use CONNECT … to maintain contact." and "I thought that setting up specific goals was a bit too regimented." One issue that directly impacted the efficacy of CONNECT is whether conference attendees understood the purpose of the system and were able to use it effectively. Although none of the closed-response questions addressed these questions, the open-ended comments identified a few issues. For example, one person wrote: "I didn't realize until after the conference that unless you scanned together you wouldn't be able to see contact information." and "I didn't really figure out how it worked until the 2nd day and wish I'd been more involved since the beginning." Pictures To address feedback from GHC08 (e.g., that it was difficult to locate people), the version of CONNECT used at GHC09 included the ability to upload and view pictures of all CONNECT participants. When asked about the pictures, 62% of respondents indicated they were either very or somewhat valuable; however, only 45% of conference attendees took the time to upload a photo. Daily Emails One feature that differentiates CONNECT from systems that are exclusively designed to capture contact information is the email sent at the end of each day; this email reminds participants of their networking goals, provides tips to effectively network the next day, and lists the connections made during the day. When asked whether the daily updates helped meet their networking goals, 47% of participants from GHC09 agreed or strongly agreed, 26% disagreed or strongly disagreed, and 26% were neutral. Additionally, about 3% of the open-ended comments mentioned the daily emails. Most of these were positive, such as "At first, I thought CONNECT was a silly gimic [sic]. But, after I received the first day of updates, I saw what a useful tool it was. It provided useful information on following up a connection and learning more about the person that you meet." Another person stated: "The value to me was not the catagories [sic], but the fact that I got a list each day of many of the people that I met." It's also important to be aware of information overload, as one person noted: "Personally, I didn't have much time at the end of the day to read through the entire email. The headers helped me to read the parts that were most important to me, though." and another requested "Fewer e-mails." ANALYSIS Functionality of the CONNECT system, which is designed to help attendees meet each other, includes sending a welcome email explaining CONNECT, providing networking tips prior to the conference, displaying affiliations prominently with colored ribbons attached to conference badges, and using volunteers with scanners at

the conference to remind attendees that it is important to meet and exchange information. Features of the system intended to help attendees maintain contacts include providing easy access to contact information without the need to exchange business cards (especially important for students, who may not have business cards yet), end-of-day emails listing connections made that day, and an end-ofconference summary that lists all connections made. Based on the results presented previously, we believe these features provide a good foundation for a networking support tool. We have also identified several guidelines for the design of such a system. The first imperative is to understand a conference attendee's goals and provide effective support to meet those goals. We hypothesized that affiliations and areas of interest would be an appropriate basis for networking. Our results suggest that these categories are relevant for many conference attendees, but that additional goals (e.g., wanting a mentor) should be included. Furthermore, specifying goals and identifying possible people to meet is only the first step. Full support requires that the system also provide mechanisms for locating those people at the conference. Badges and pictures are appropriate tools toward this end, but are not completely sufficient. Additional support needs to be provided, possibly in the form of more pre-conference planning or the use of geolocation on smartphones. Finally, any feedback provided by the system regarding goals should be relevant and meaningful, and should not impose arbitrary metrics. Simply reporting that a person is not meeting their goals may be more demoralizing than motivating. A second critical guideline is to respect a conference attendee's preferences. Participants need to be able to connect easily when and where they want (e.g., at poster sessions, meals, and after the end of the day's official activities). Attendees need to be in control of the number of connections (e.g., large scans of entire sessions may not be effective connections) and the number of emails (e.g., some attendees want to avoid being inundated with email). Privacy and security are also important considerations. A third requirement is to support the users within their normal routines. This requirement may be especially important for maintaining connections, as conference contacts may be neglected once conference attendees return home. A necessary component of this requirement is for contact information to be reliable, accurate, and easily accessible. Integrating connections from the conference with the participant's existing contact information is also critical. FUTURE WORK If conference attendees are not able to create a connection every time they meet someone of interest, our system will have minimal value. To address the issues with finding scanners, we are in the process of updating the system so that conference attendees can use their own cell phones to record connections. So far, we have added a web application that can be accessed from any Internet-enabled phone or laptop, an Android-specific application, and the ability to

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Session F2H record connections via text messages. We are continuing to work on an iPhone application and other various enhancements. These methods of access will allow us to remove the barcode-based system, making CONNECT more accessible to all users at the conference. In response to feedback concerning affiliations and goals, we have further refined the list of affiliations and have added several questions related to goal setting, such as whether a CONNECT participant is looking for or willing to be a mentor. We are also in the process of adding more options to the search function in order to enable conference attendees to locate others within their field of study or from the same geographical area or a specific organization. These features should be beneficial for both students and nonstudents. We also plan to add a networking game in which conference attendees search for others with certain attributes (e.g., faculty member from same state). We anticipate that this type of activity would be especially beneficial for students, as it should provide a safe context in which to begin a conversation. Finally, we plan to update our survey following the conference to address the new features and further expand our insight into the impact of CONNECT, particularly related to goal setting and the success attendees have at meeting their goals for the conference. ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors would like to thank Jeremy Norman, Aarti Munjal, Kathy Richardson, Kerri Stone, Monica Noring, Chris Walsh, Gary Scheid, Julie Krause, and several employees at ABI for their assistance developing and deploying the CONNECT system. We would also like to thank Lecia Barker, Michelle Slattery, and Caroline Simard for helping with the system evaluation. Lastly, this material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under CNS-0738102 and CNS-0940632. REFERENCES [1]

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AUTHOR INFORMATION Brandon Vargo Undergraduate, Colorado School of Mines, [email protected]. Dr. Cyndi Rader Teaching Professor, Colorado School of Mines, [email protected]. Dr. Tracy Camp Interim Department Head, Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Colorado School of Mines, [email protected].

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