Using Oral History Stories in Computing Education
From Anita Borg Institute Wiki
Computing Educators Oral History Project
Barbara B. Owens
Vickie Almstrum
Lecia Barker
A: Audience
Website: Ceohp.org
Barbara: Right now, we have a prototype site. On the far right, the list of the interview that are fully approved, are there for you to see. Do any of you know any of these people? Two of them are in the room, at least. We’ll try Andrea. We wanted to get the stories of women, but after we did that, we decided that was like one hand clapping. If you only know women’s stories, how do you know they are different from men’s? So we have men’s stories as well. On each page we start out with a bio, and then a video clip of their interview, a transcript of the interview, and then “pull quotes”.
Barbara: So that gives you an idea of what we have. We have a collection of 19 interviews and one approved video which isn’t a part of the official collection, but was granted to us by Fran Allen yesterday and is a YouTube video. Approved means that we have done some editing, and the person that has been interviewed has agreed that their interview, video, and audio may be on the website.
A: Have you done many that haven’t been approved?
Barbara: We have done one that was totally rejected. We would like to hear stories of non-successful and non-successful people. This woman was successful, but at the time of the interview she was at a harder point. Reflecting on the interview she gave, she just wanted it destroyed. Sometimes we have to make cuts. So sure, people can approve parts and not parts, and add parts if they want. They are told that before they start the interview and through the approval process.
Vickie: During the summer, we began the process of analysis. We were thinking that we wanted to do something to inspire and capture the stories of the pioneers who are coming to retirement or who have recently passed away. Over time, we realized that it’s probably not enough to have the stories of the women near retirement. The best mentor is someone who is only a step or two ahead of you. That’s where we made the decision to get stories from younger interviews as well. So, it goes beyond just being an oral history project. We are using a qualitative data analysis tool to find themes of challenges and careers. We also went through the process of using a whimsical tool called Wordle, which highlights, in terms of frequency, important words from an interview. So you can see the main ideas that are coming through. Part of what we’d like to talk to you about, seeing that this process is going on, is how can we make use of it. How can we inspire your students or colleagues to come along? We have had whimsical ideas such as the American girl dolls. They represent certain periods of history. There are stories written to help illustrate their lives. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a computing educator doll? Or the character finger puppets and so forth that would convey some of these stories? Those are some of the ideas. What we’d like to do is hear from you guys. It really is going to be valuable to hear a little bit from you if you have ideas or things to share, or people who should be included in this type of collection.
A: Have you thought of interviewing someone throughout their career? Vickie: Yes, creating a longitudinal story could be very good, although one of our referees thought that it was an absolutely dreadful idea from a social science point of view. I interviewed someone today who is early in her career, so to revisit her in 5 or 10 years would be very informative over time. It also speaks to the longtime intention of this project. We do expect it to live on. We’ve talked to the Charles Babbage institute about putting all the materials in their care and giving access to it through a portal.
A: I’ve notice how few of the women that we know don’t have Wikipedia pages, and yet there are men in computer science who have nice Wikipedia pages. Vickie: We’d certainly welcome you if you wanted to use the resources we have available to get permission from the person and build up a Wikipedia page.
A: I noticed that you’re talking about reaching out to undergrad or precollege students. Yesterday we were at the award ceremony. Maybe some of the girls who got the Anita Borg awards would be good candidates for interviews, because it would be interesting to know about what they did in their research and got to where they were.
A: About the questions that you’re asking in your interviews: I know they’re somewhat structured and they’ve been through some refinements. Is there some way for people outside of the project to pitch their own questions?
Vickie: We don’t have that type of process yet, but it certainly is an interesting idea and could be fit into the overall planning process. One of the things that I’m trying to drive right now is putting a packet of all the info and guidelines together to help in planning an interview. I experimented with creating a grid of the questions we have that I can customize each time I’m going to have an interview.
Lecia: One of the first things you’re supposed to do in an oral history is to look at their resume so you don’t ask a bunch of questions that you could answer by looking at their cv. If you see certain things in their resume, you can pursue certain lines of questioning.
A: I attended a session, and in our packet there was a booklet that described the social sciences career patterns of women in technical jobs. At one of the sessions, I asked it we could do that for women in academia. And if you’re going to do interviews of younger people, you would have all the workings that you would need to do to chart the career patterns of technical women.
Vickie: One of the projects we did this summer was to create a graph that had major life events in an academic career on it. We could compare and contrast the different paths. The paths were often not linear and direct. So we suspect that, especially for a lot of women, the path is very interesting. It can be inspirational to look and compare and see how women could still accomplish their goals through convoluted paths. A big part of what we need to do is figure out how we can methodically move forward in keeping up with the analysis. We would also love to attract grad students who are hungry for data to analyze. The data is in prime form to be adapted for different kinds of studies. We are hoping it would allow for many Ph.D theses to grow out of it. We do want to compare and contrast across the years, genders, and varying factors.
A: I had mentioned this to Barbara before, but I brought my eleven-year-old daughter to the closing panel in the 2004 Grace Hopper. It had such a good impact on her, and so many times driving around with the Girl Scout troop, I heard her telling her friends about all these women that invented computing. She was really impacted with the understanding that women invented this stuff. So she’s part of a potential audience. The other thing I want to mention is that I work with K-12 teachers, and almost every year elementary schools do biographies or timelines, and they are always looking at new twists to do. I love the idea of having a book or something that could get into a K-12 library eventually.
Vickie: Yes, and there could even be different levels. A board book, or Early readers book. We could also come out with a Girl Scout badge.
A: Somebody should make a book for Grace Hopper, who was one of the most celebrated women in the military. There is an exhibit at this military museum for women at the Arlington cemetery. There was a panel there for Grace and then there were many other panels for many other women. Now, if you go in the gift shop, you can look at the literature that’s being sold. That’s when you see there’s a small book series for teens written about historic military women, and they don’t have one on Grace Hopper.
A: So, can we make a connection with somebody who publishes childrens' books?
Vickie: One of the places of recent inspiration for me is the Charles Babbage institute who held a conference on gender and women in computing. There are people all over who are interested in this. I see some connections being made. There will be a book coming out from that conference, and we will contribute a chapter to that. It was also fun to see how many traditional crafts, like knitting or quilting, were used to display the stories of women in computing.
Barbara: I’ve got to ask for some special help; did you get a book in your packet about the stories of programmers? It’s the story of 19 male programmers. So I’ve decided my goal for Grace Hopper next year is to have a book of women programmers in the registration packet. There are many wonderful stories. We want to hear names of women that you want to hear. Everybody please give one name of a story of an iconic technical woman that you’d like to see in a book.
Andrea Lawrence
Mary Czerwinski – imposter panel
Jane Prey
Johanna Bayles ????
Susan Landau
Ada Lovelace
Dr. Julita Vassileva Saskatchewan ??? maybe Jeanie Salachema????
Linda Apsley
Mary Lou Jepsen
Maria Klawe
Women from working class families, different ethnic groups, non-PhDs, a Wren – their place in history
Venture capitalist and chemistry
ENIAC programmers
Successful women in start-up companies
Examples from outside the US
Female in NGOS
Jean Bartik (Eniac)
Wife of John Mauchly (Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli)
Jean Sammet – 1st woman president of ACM
Sylvia Charp -- First president of AFIRS
Grace Hopper and Anita Borg
Manuela Veloso at CMU
Wendy Hall
Susan Butts at Dell
IT Mary Good Dean of Engineering and Technology
Arati Prabhakar
A: I was thinking that with the book, it would be nice to have a new project out of it, and see the difference between women then and today, and whether there has been a change. For example, is it easier for women to succeed today? What did they do and how were they successful then?
