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

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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.