Addressing The Computing Gender Gap: A Case Study Using Feminist Pedagogy and Visual Culture Art Education

Gender and technology scholarship demonstrates a longstanding, persistence gender gap reflecting the inequity between the large numbers of men and small numbers of women in technology educational courses and careers. What instructional and institutional changes can address and counteract the current gender inequity status quo?

This dissertation presents a two-year critical case study of Digital Animation: A Technology Mentoring Program for Young Women, a pedagogical intervention that intends to increase the likelihood of young women participants pursuing future educational, personal, and professional technology opportunities. The program, situated at The Ohio State University's Advanced Computing Center for Art and Design, provides a group of 15 to 18 young women with an intensive two-week animation experience using Maya 3D animation software to produce short films on local environmental issues.

The major program hypothesis is that women may be more likely to learn technology as embedded within an arts-centered curriculum, where arts function as the primary medium for learning and communication, as opposed to traditional computer technology instruction. Learning becomes co-constructed, collaborative, interdisciplinary, creative, and personal; learners become active. The aim is to provide participants with personal instructional support, a peer network, mentors, examples of successful women in technology, personal success, and exposure to a wide range of technology possibilities.

I use gender and technology scholarship in conjunction with multiple critical theoretical perspectives, including feminist poststructuralist pedagogy and visual culture art education, to create a multi-faceted, complex framework for analyzing Digital Animation, its efforts, and its outcomes.

This case study presents data highlighting ways a visual culture art education orientation can also utilize other critical theoretical perspectives, such as feminist poststructuralist pedagogy, to address educational equity issues. This program demonstrates ways the arts can serve as the primary medium for interdisciplinary education, including and incorporating technology education, in ways that benefit marginalized learners.