Post on 09-Aug-2020
SOCI 2120-‐001 White Paper Submitted to Dr. Max Liboiron Submitted by: Moira Curran, John Follett, Kristen Lyver, & Josh Merner
D e c e m b e r 1 1 t h , 2 0 1 4
Gender & Student Response Systems (Top Hat)
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Table of Contents
Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 2 Research Question............................................................................................................................4
Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 4 Findings ...................................................................................................................................... 4 Response from Top Hat...................................................................................................................4 Participation.......................................................................................................................................4 Why the Change? ...............................................................................................................................5
I-Methodology and The User ............................................................................................... 6 Anonymity and classroom participation......................................................................... 7 Recommendations and Conclusions ................................................................................. 9 Appendix ................................................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined. Works cited ........................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
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Introduction The learning landscape at Memorial University needs to be agile, and adapt to changing technologies, and the ways that they align with the student experience. This may also impact how Professors choose to deliver course material. This white paper investigates the intersection between the classroom technology software, Top Hat, and explores if gender scripts were inscribed into it during development. What will also be taken into consideration is how the implementation of this technology in this class has affected participation. Previous methods of classroom participation include speaking during class, hand raising, and filling out surveys. These same methods are provided via Top Hat, but this white paper will investigate if participation increases, and attempt to find any correlation between a found increase or decrease and gender. Throughout this white paper we will be answering these queries, but referring specifically and only to the Fall 2014 section 001 of Sociology 2120, taught by Dr. Max Liboiron at the Prince Philip Drive campus (will be referred as “Sociology 2120” hence forward). This group of students was used as subjects during the primary research performed during data collection for this white paper. This white paper will investigate gender differences in use of technology and participation and using technologies.
From http://www.mun.ca/ciap/Planning/MUN_Annual_Report_2008-‐09.pdf
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Research Question How has the implementation of Top Hat, a student response system, effected classroom participation based on gender?
Methodology
For this study, our group administered a survey (See in Appendix A) to the Sociology class SOCI 2120-‐001 during the 2014 fall semester. While the class itself consisted of fifty-‐two students, only thirty-‐nine of the fifty-‐two completed the survey. Two of these students provided us with inconclusive data by not disclosing the amount of times they felt that they participated a class. For this reason we excluded those two students which left us with a sample group of thirty-‐seven students.
Men Women
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Findings
Response from Top Hat In response to an email sent to Top Hat support that questioned if Top Hat had considered gender during it’s developmental stages, we received this information. “We do follow public standards as for our user interface and general aspects of Top Hat, to make it user friendly, but the overall goal has always been to make it gender neutral.“
-‐ Varnit Grewal,Top Hat Support
Participation
• Due to an uneven ratio of men to women, we have decided to express our findings through percentages to better compare and present the data.
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The first aspect we looked at when analyzing our data was how students’ participation changed when comparing in class participation to that of Top Hat. We did this so that we could either confirm or dispute our hypothesis. For the most part, regarding participation our hypothesis was accurate. Both men and women showed significant increases in their level of participation as a whole. While the level of men who participated by 1-‐2 times/class didn’t change drastically, the nonparticipants changed quite a bit from 36.36% during In Class to 4.55% while using Top Hat, taking up space in more active participation levels. Shockingly, 66.67% of women self-‐identified as nonparticipants during In Class discussions, but also showed the largest increase in other levels of participation when using Top Hat.
Why the Change?
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The data provided from the question on level of participation In Class showed us that men were more involved within class discussion than women. From this initial observation we assumed that if Top Hat did incourage more participation within class, men, who were already showing a more active role in class discussions, would increase more than women. However, we found quite the opposite. In our graph on Level of Interval Change (See Apendix A) women showed the largest degreeof interval changes (1 interval change= 0 times/class to 1-‐2 times/class, 2 interval change = 0 times/class to 3-‐4 times/class, etc.). It was then that we started looking at validations for changes in participation to explain this phanomanon. As shown in the graph above, the validations made by men were more equally spread across the board, where over 50% of women validated that anonymity was the reasoning behind their Increased Participation. Due to this specific finding we decided to conduct some research pertaining to anonymity in a scolastic setting.
I-‐Methodology and The User Historically, technology has been the domain of men. Men are viewed as “having a natural affinity for technology while women supposedly fear or dislike it.” (Bray, 38) This outdated, sexist rhetoric still lingers in the public consciousness, coloring how we view gender roles in the use of technology. Our findings, however, show that the opposite is true. They show that when introduced to a technical means of participation in class, Top Hat in our study, women in the class report they participate much more than they had before using this new platform. In contrast, the men respondents showed a much smaller increase in their self-‐reported use of the Top Hat platform. Given this information, how can one reconcile the historical narrative of the male dominance of the technological field with the evidence that women are just as, if not participatory in the use of technology? To consider this, one must be aware of the I-‐methodology present in the early construction of technological systems. In the past, men have primarily been the ones to develop technology and as such, men were the ones to configure their output to what they perceived the user to be. Because of the difficulties inherent in being able to step outside of one's role and
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consider how a naive user would approach their creations, many developers have fallen victim to configuring their tech as if they themselves are the user. This has led to too much of the technology we have today being inherently scripted male with little consideration to female users. Steve Woolgar references this process in “Configuring the User”, when he describes the development of the DNS (Domain Name Services) protocol. "In configuring the user, the architects of DNS, its hardware engineers, product engineers, project managers, salespersons, technical support, purchasing, finance and control, legal personnel and the rest are both contributing to a definition of the reader of their text and establishing parameters for readers' actions. Indeed, the whole history of the DNS project can be construed as a struggle to configure (that is, to define, enable and constrain) the user. These different groups and individuals at different times offered varying accounts of “what the user is like”. Knowledge and expertise about the user was distributed within the company in a loosely structured manner, with certain groups claiming more expertise than others in knowing what users are like." (Woolgar 69) Currently, developers are beginning to realize the gender scripted nature of their works and are accounting for this in the construction and development of their systems as evidenced by Top Hat's effort to remain gender neutral. Women have long had a pivotal role in computing history. One of the first programmers to work with Charles Babbage's analytical engine was a woman named Ada Lovelace. Today, women like Sarah Allen are still pushing the boundaries of the tech industry with advances like her development of Flash video, the basis for video streaming sites like YouTube. (NPR 4/29/13)
Anonymity and classroom participation Just as notable as the gender differences baked into designs of technologies, our findings suggest that women participate more in classroom discussions when they are solicited from the students by the professor via an online platform such as Top Hat. These discussions can be such classroom activities as live online interactive questions or comments, and survey-‐based responses. This level of participation increases yet again when the forum allows for the student participant’s name, regardless of gender, to be anonymous to both peers and the professor though more so with women who gender self identify as women. These findings were echoed across some of our research on the intersection of gender and classroom participation, making particular reference to reasons behind anxieties women have about participation. One study found “students can find it difficult to debate with one another if they worry about expressing their views or the impact of disagreeing with others” (Ainsworth, Gelmini-‐Hornsby, Threapleton, Crook, O’Malley, and Buda, 365–378) the study also concluded the following:
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“Voting can therefore be particularly useful to teachers facilitating debates as they can swiftly direct students to issues where they see the greatest potential benefit (e.g., topics that have provoked the greatest divergence or those where students all agree but the teacher would like to stimulate alternative perspectives). In contrast, anonymous debate did not come without some negative consequences. It could be that for educational situations, anonymous voting and public debate is an ideal compromise with participants free to express their positions but then accountable for their contributions to the debate…” (Ainsworth et al., 365-‐378). While the previous sample did not differentiate based on gender, and only on feelings regarding anonymity, another study investigated the classroom experiences of college women. This study found that “The majority (of female college students), however, had positive things to say about their online classroom experiences; and of these, a large number identified “anonymity” as the most important positive aspect of the online learning environment.” (Sullivan, 129-‐144). Regarding anonymity, one study compared and contrasted the effects of privacy on psychological health, demonstrating that privacy is generally positive, and that a lack of privacy can lead to anti-‐social behavior and aggressiveness. Though this was beyond the scope of our whitepaper, the most important takeaway we can incorporate into our findings is that “The most notable means by which anonymity can be positive is the importance for privacy on psychological wellbeing” (Christopherson, 3038–3056). This indicates to us that a certain degree of privacy is positive for a student within the learning environment. When seeking any correlations between privacy and gender, “women tend to use privacy regulation mechanisms within social situations whereas men tend to use privacy regulation mechanisms to escape from social situations.” (Christopherson, 3038–3056) Christopherson (3038-‐3056) expands on some early research by Pendersen of this topic, and found that “men and women did not differ on the dimensions of reserve, solitude, or anonymity. However, men were more likely than women to use isolation as a form of privacy and women were more likely than men to use intimacy with family or friends”(Christopherson, 3038–3056). As such, this demonstrates that differences do exist in how men and women identify with privacy. Beyond the scope of this paper, the effects of group behavior and anonymity also have interesting interplay that may have affected the outcome of our survey questions. Our group speculates that group behavior may have had a correlation with the bullying and inappropriate comments Dr. Max Liboiron experienced during a lecture with Top Hat live updates, but further investigation into this is again, outside the scope of this paper. Finally, when investigating CMCs (computer mediated communications) many social and behavioral factors need to be considered, and such “models and theories should not rely exclusively on an analysis of processes and principles of interpersonal
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interaction in order to predict social effects across the spectrum of social outcomes.” (Tanis and Postmes, 955-‐970). Tanis and Postmes (955-‐970) go on to note that,” rich interactions , for example, interactions that allow the transmission of cues to identity such as face-‐to-‐face, are superior in that they make the interaction more personal, but that these outcomes are not mirrored by the evaluation of the interaction. It is suggested that the presence of cues to identity positively affects interpersonal perceptions, but at the same time decreases perceptions of solidarity or entitativity” (Tanis and Postmes, 955-‐970).
Recommendations and Conclusions At most universities including Memorial, women make up about 60% of the undergraduate population (Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2009). Yet the data we received from our survey and the information obtained via research has shown us that women tend to have a much lower participation rate in the classroom than their counterparts. The data told us that there was an increase in female participation while Top Hat use was anonymous. While some could conclude that technologies that offer an anonymous feature should be incorporated in the classroom to encourage female participation, we disagree. Whatever the reasons are for this trend in lack of participation, something needs to change so that we may better incorporate and accept the ideas and opinions of both genders in class. Top Hat had told us in an email that gender scripts are not considered in its development. Anonymity while effective should not be viewed as a solution for this problem. Top Hat should consider how as well as why opposing genders participate and develop their online forum to encourage an equal level of participation between all genders.
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Works Cited Bray, Francesca. "Gender and Technology." Annual Review of Anthropology 36 (2007): 37-53. Inskeep, Steve; Montagne, Renee. "Blazing The Trail For Female Programmers" National Public Radio. Posted: 4/29/13 Accessed: 12/8/14 http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php… Woolgar, Steve. "Configuring the User: The Case of Usability Trials." The Sociological review 38.S1 (1990): 58-99. Kimberly M. Christopherson. “The positive and negative implications of anonymity in Internet social interactions: “On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog”” Computers in Human Behavior Volume 23, Issue 6, November 2007, Pages 3038–3056 Lafrance, Adrienne. "Tallying Female Workers Isn't Enough To Make Tech More Diverse" The Atlantic. Posted: 8/11/14 Accessed: 12/8/14 http://www.theatlantic.com/…/what-good-is-all-this-…/375829/ Martin Tanis, Tom Postmes “Two faces of anonymity: Paradoxical effects of cues to identity in CMC” Computers in Human Behavior Volume 23, Issue 2, March 2007, Pages 955–970 Memorial Unviersity of Newfoundland, “Memorial University of Newfoundland Annual Report 2008-2009”. Retrieved from: http://www.mun.ca/ciap/Planning/MUN_Annual_Report_2008-09.pdf on December 7, 2014. Patrick Sullivan. ““It’s Easier to Be Yourself When You Are Invisible”: Female College Students Discuss Their Online Classroom Experiences.” Innovative Higher Education, Vol. 27, No. 2, Winter 2002: Pages129-144 Sharon Ainsworth,Giulia Gelmini-Hornsby, Kate Threapleton, Charles Crook, Claire O’Malley, Marie Buda . “Anonymity in classroom voting and debating” Learning and Instruction Volume 21, Issue 3, June 2011, Pages 365–378