HCC: Small: Supporting Males' and Females' Problem-Solving Strategies in End-User Debugging

本专题将探讨两个与电脑程式的最终使用者除错相关的议题。首先，男性和女性最终用户程序员尝试使用什么策略进行调试，他们用什么成功？其次，最终用户编程环境应该如何支持和指导这些调试策略？大多数编程的东西最终都必须被调试。对调试等问题解决任务的支持必须一直延伸到问题解决的核心，即战略。虽然曾经只有专业程序员开发软件，但今天最终用户创建自己的软件是很常见的。常见的例子是电子表格系统，其中最终用户通过创建和更改公式进行编程，以及Web应用程序构建器，其中最终用户通过演示所需的行为和/或在从调色板中拖动的计算工具之间建立快速连接来进行编程。还有许多其他例子。事实上，仅在美国，每天就有数百万的终端用户在进行这种形式的编程--比专业程序员多得多。然而，不幸的是，越来越多的证据表明，一些女性没有像男性那样从这些赋权手段中受益。最近有报道称，在最终用户接近和采用与调试相关的新软件功能的意愿方面存在性别差异，对软件功能的态度存在差异，最终用户程序员对功能的摆弄也存在差异。在基于软件的问题解决中，性别差异的其他结果也正在出现。这些研究结果表明，软件本身的一些因素可能会微妙地削弱女性在许多基于软件的解决问题任务中的效率。该项目有助于在不断发展的、异构的社会技术系统中有效地使用信息技术，使更多的人能够充分利用计算的力量。它将通过调查男性和女性成功使用软件解决问题的潜在策略来实现这一目标，然后调查如何支持这些策略。这项工作还将在如何引导和鼓励计算思维方面取得新的进展，以帮助男性和女性解决计算中出现的日常问题，将经验方法与概念验证原型相结合。 此外，它还将为教育方案做出贡献，特别是将吸收有才华的女高中生作为研究实习生，以鼓励她们向计算机科学方向发展。

This project will examine two issues related to end-user debugging of computer programs. First, what strategies do male and female end-user programmers try to use for debugging, and with which do they succeed? Second, how should end-user programming environments go about supporting and guiding these debugging strategies? Most of what is programmed must eventually be debugged. The support of problem-solving tasks such as debugging must extend all the way to the heart of problem solving, to strategy.Although once only professional programmers developed software, today it is common for end users to create some of their own software. Common examples are spreadsheet systems, in which end users program by creating and changing formulas, and web application builders, in which end users program by demonstrating the desired behavior and/or making dataflow connections among computation tools dragged in from a palette. Numerous other examples exist. In fact, in the U.S. alone, there are millions of end users doing such forms of programming every day - many more than professional programmers. Unfortunately, however, evidence is beginning to accumulate that some females are not benefiting as much as males from these empowering devices. There have been recent reports of gender differences in end users' willingness to approach and adopt new software features related to debugging, differences in attitudes toward software features, and differences in end-user programmers' playful tinkering with features. Other results of gender differences in software-based problem solving are also emerging. These findings suggest that there are factors within the software itself that may be subtly undermining females' effectiveness in many software-based problem-solving tasks.This project contributes to the effective use of information technology in evolving, heterogeneous socio-technical systems, enabling more people to take full advantage of the power of computing. It will accomplish this by investigating the underlying strategies males and females use successfully to solve problems with software, and then investigating how to support these strategies. This work will also produce new advances in how to guide and encourage computational thinking to help males and females solve everyday problems that arise in computing, combining empirical methods with proof-of-concept prototypes. In addition, it will contribute to education programs, and in particular will involve talented female high-school students as research interns, to encourage them in the direction of computer science.