A Physical Computing Workshop to Engage Girls from Low-Income Backgrounds

The persistent gender gap in computer science, especially among women from low-income backgrounds, continues to limit diversity and innovation within the technological sector. This underrepresentation also restricts access to career paths that can enhance social mobility, particularly for women in developing countries. Physical computing offers a hands-on approach that can improve programming skills and computational thinking through interaction with tangible hardware. This research focuses on developing a short physical computing workshop tailored to young girls from low-income communities. The study combines education, tangible interfaces, and coding. Through a series of classroom-based studies and laboratory experiments, this PhD work will assess the impact of the workshop on self-efficacy and learning in programming and computational thinking. The anticipated contributions of this research include insights into the effectiveness of tangible, user-friendly physical computing workshops in increasing engagement among underrepresented groups in computer science.