Det har vært nok en lang dag for IME. Dagen begynte klokken ni med tilstedeværelse i klasse for å lære bort en “kuul” bloggeting. Deretter var det rett bort til universitetet for å oppdatere templaten til prosjektbloggen med de nye bloggadressene til elevene jeg var hos i dag. Deretter var det å poste noen nye innlegg i prosjektbloggen, og så lage seg en feed hos bloglines, og legge inn alle bloggene til de to klassene jeg undersøker og så la jeg inn bloggene til alle jeg kjenner også, for sikkerhets skyld. Så nå passer jeg på alle sammen, og leser alle nye poster innen to timer etter at de er lagt ut. Så nå skal jeg kommentere alle poster, fort hos alle, lynende kjappe, presise og morsomme kommentarer. Kjapt. Alltid.

I have started collecting data in two classes at Bergen Katedralskole. I have been to two classes, and the students have answered a questonnaire, and I have written all the different answers in a document. (48 pages). I attended one of the classes again today, and now all the students have a blog, and most of them have posted their first post.

Now it is time to write a summary from all the answers I got from the quistionnaire. When all that is done, I will discuss with my supervisor whether I should try to get time to interview some of the students.

I am currently collecting data for my master thesis, and will not update my blog with anything interesting about my thesis for at least one month. Check in again in March!

Oct 2005: Initial meeting – Co-student works as teacher in high school, and offered her two classes as control group (class B) and research class (class A). We discuss introducing gaming and blogging as part of the teaching, I explain my thesis and what I want to research, on how the gap between girls and boys may be reduced by introducing gaming and blogging in classes as a tool to make all the students see computers as “fun”.

Dec 2005: Second meeting – Teacher says she need a good reason/explanation to allow me to introduce gaming and blogging in class A. She implies that blogging may be easier to introduce than gaming, in the sense that it will be easier to explain to the administration at school that it is useful and necessary teaching. The questionnaire in class B is scheduled to be answered at the same time as class A answers their questionnaires. Scheduled start is middle/ end of January, by letting both classes answer a questionnaire, and project is expected to last two months before ending questionnaire is answered in late March/ early April.

Planned meetings with teacher:
Jan 2006: Third meeting – Detailed planning of what to do in the classes, how should they blog, what should the students blog about, what should the students play, will they be allowed to play for long and the games they want to? Planning how teacher prepares class for the researchers “inngripen”

Immediately after first session in class: Fourth meeting – teacher and researcher discuss the first session and agrees on whether there are changes needed for the next session and if so, what to change.

Feb 2006: Fifth meeting – teacher and researcher discuss the progression of the sessions, whether it is appropriate to continue the study, and whether the terms need to be changed.

March 2006: Sixth meeting – teacher and researcher discuss the progression of the sessions, and discuss when to end the sessions

Immediately after last session: Seventh meeting – teacher and researcher discuss how he project has worked out, teacher adds her opinion on the project to researcher.

Do students in high school want to know computers? Do they feel they have to know computers? And if so, who is deciding they have to know computers, and why are they deciding so? Do students handle computers? Where and why? Who teaches them about computers, and what do they want to achieve by handling computers? Do they believe that knowing computers will matter later, when they start working? How will knowledge about computers or lack of knowledge about computers give them an advantage, a disadvantage or make no difference? How much do students think is an appropriate amount of knowledge about computers? Why do they consider that an appropriate amount?

I believe that boys and girls will answer these questions differently, and I believe that the answers will be more similar if students experience computers as fun in school, that teaching about computers also includes fun stuff, like gaming.

First meeting with supervisor Tuesday 10 January. We agreed on aiming for a good grade, and to be finished in November this year. To accomplish that we will meet once a week, and I got homework for our next meeting. We scheduled weekly appointments every Thursday at 11 o’clock.

This week I will work with making a plan for meetings with the teacher in the classes I want to do research in, and document all the meetings that we have. I will make a plan for my experiment, and a plan for meeting the students, also of course document every time I meet with them. I will plan and design and get feedback from co-students on my work, nd I will specify what I want to measure – is it motivation or is it something else? I will describe what I want my master thesis to result in, what do I want to cover in my master thesis, and what kind of career do I want when I’m done?

Article written by Brenda Cantwell Wilson, Department of Computer Science & Information Systems, Murray State University, published in Computer Science Education, 2002, vol 12, No 1-2, pp. 141-164.

The number of women completing bachelor’s degrees in general have increased, but the bachelor’s level for women in computer science is reduced. Study examines factors of success in introductory computer science course and determines which factors who might affect the gender gap.

Identification of two main problems: Recruiting and keeping females in computer science programs.

Recruiting: Why is the numbers of females who enroll in computer science programs so low? Lack of ability or lack of support and encouragement? Increasing evidence say that it is not lack of ability. Studies carried out on differences in math and spatial achievement scores found sex differences only in schools where also there were significant sex-differences in the students self-perception on their ability to learn mathematics. When students in junior and senior high was given the Raven Progressive Matrices, a test designed to be free of verbal and cultural bias, there were no gender difference in the performance.

The low recruitment has to do with recruitment factors such as lack of role models and encouragement, gender stereotyping, lack of self-esteem among females. There are four social factors that can explain the low level of females in computer science courses:
- parental encouragement directed towards sons rather than daughters
- boy and girl peer groups widening the gap
- stereotyped game software
- lack of female role models both in the classroom and in the media

Research indicates that there are significant differences between males and females in their experience with and attitudes toward computers. In a study carried out in 1992 one found that males had both more experience and better skills than females in specific computer usage, particularly programming and gaming.

Women also have less pre-college computing experience than men. One of the best indicators of success in a college computer science course was having a high school programming course using structured methodology. Application experience only did not prove to be an indicator of success in computer science courses in college. For females, any type of prior computing experience was significant in success in computer science classes in college, and only specific types of computing experience were significant for males. A study of women in introductory courses in New Zealand found that “students are intimidated by seeing other students who have prior programming experience completing the assignments very quickly”.

Women find environment and culture in computer science activities to be hostile. One reason could be that women prefer activities where social interaction is encouraged. Females prefer to avoid assessments done on a competitive basis. Girls and women do not like the encouragement of “highly focused, almost obsessive behavior.” Women also have few role models. Female students may feel isolated.

Attribution theory states that explanations for success and failures can be given in a stable nature or an unstable nature. If explanations due to success are to unstable causes and failures to stable causes we have a low probability of persistence. Successful students’ intention to continue in science was directly related to their attribution to ability and inversely related to task ease. Several studies have suggested that females tend to attribute their successes in computer science to luck and failures to lack of ability.

My final version of my project description is in. It is very similar to my third draft, only with every instance of the word “general” removed.

Project description

Decreasing gender as a factor in ICT-learning?
How games can affect motivation for computers

Introduction:
Theoretic background:
General problem:
Hypothesis:
Method:
References:
Appendix A – Rules of an empirical experiment

Introduction:
When I was finishing my bachelor at the Institute of media and information science at University of Bergen I noticed how women and men tend to place themselves in a gendered context to computers. I was not a typical woman since I studied computers, and my female friends in the courses I took were also somehow a bit less feminine in the sense that technology was not a scary thing for them. After reading a small sample of all the theories on this area of gender and technology I have found that my starting point in this area was based on the common ideas that I have gained as a woman and a member of a gendered society, and not from an objective observation as I thought at first. I have changed my perception of what gender is, and I believe that I have a more objective approach to the idea of what gender is, and how gender plays a part in society.

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Theoretic background:
In 2001, 86% of men and 77% of women under the age of 40 in Norway had used a computer in the last month (Frønes, 2002). This shows that most of the population in Norway uses computers on a regular basis, and the difference between men and women is 9%, hence men are more active users then women. If one does only concider gender and not age, there is an increase in differences between men and women. There are also differences based on gender when looking at who has access to computers (Frønes, 2002).

Both boys and girls use computers for schoolwork, but when it comes to gaming there is a difference in gender. Frønes suggests a hypothesis where he says that the differences between boys and girls in relation to computers has to do with what they choose to spend their time doing – boys want to play computer games and girls want to read books.

Young people go through a phase where they need to find out who they are (Lie 2003, Håpnes og Rasmussen) and what they want, and to be able to do that, girls tend to position themselves according to other girls – (Lie 2003, Håpnes og Rasmussen, Bjerrum Nilsen og Rudberg 1994, Kleven 1992). They do not want to stand out compared to girlfriends.

In 1996, Håpnes and Rasmussen carried out a study to find out how girls use and relate to the Internet. Since this study was carried out when the Internet had just become a common property, the conditions for their study will have changed severly. The study is still interesting in the sense that girl’s relations among girls will not change that much over a period of ten years. Håpnes and Rasmussen found that girls are willing to spend hours in front of the computer, but that the purpose had to be different from just playing computer games. Girls found chatting a “legal” activity, according to their references to other girls. Chatting was educational and meaningful, unlike playing computer games, which was a waste of time (Håpnes and Rasmussen, 2002). .

The active use of computer games can be looked at as a way to increase knowledge about computers, and when girls choose to spend time reading books instead of playing computer games one can expect boys to have more knowledge about computers than girls have (Frønes, 2002).

The phenomenom I want to study is a typical Western problem, and there are examples that the assumptions I have for my hypothesis can not be applied anywhere else then in Western Europe, or maybe only in Norway. In Malaysia computer science is not concidered masculine at all, it is more concidered as a feminine profession, mainly because in Malaysia masculinity is connected with outdoor profession rather than computing which obviously is an indoor profession. Malaysian women choose computer science because of their enthusiasm for this area or for good career prospects (Lagesen, 2005).

In 1997 NTNU started a project which aim was to get more girls to study computer science. It was called “Jenter og data”, and used ridiculing of male hackers as a way to attract girls to study computer science (Lagesen, 2003). From 1996 to 2002 the percentage of female students increased from 8% to 22%[1]. Ridiculing the hacker as a way to feminize computers has been mentioned as a way of sterotyping both hackers and women (Gansmo et al, 2003). Women should not associate themselves with any of the characteristics that hackers have, even if one of the main characteristics is his expertice in computers, and this campaign results in also stereotyping women as the opposite of hackers.

“Læreplan for videregående opplæring – økonomi og informasjonsbehandling”[2] states that in first class at videregående, all students at “grunnkurs for almenne og økonomisk/administrative fag” is supposed to learn information handling to give all the students a common reference to utilize word processing and spreadsheets, and understand the basic principals of using data bases. The goals of the course is that students should be able to use information technology (IT) for managing text and numbers, make use of different soft ware to solve tasks on their own, understand the connection between techonlogy development and the social consequences of using IT and know about security routines, laws and agreements in the context of IT. This strategy only looks at the practical use of IT at work or keeping accounts at home or in a business.

The statistics for “økonomi og informasjonsbehandling” shows that girls have an average grade of 4,0 and boys 3,9. The numbers for exams are 3,4 and 3,3. This shows that girls and boys are almost equal in this course in contrary to language classes (i.e Spanish, German, French) where girls can have an average grade up to 1,2 grades higher than boys[3]. The courses “brukersystemer”, “programvare”, “maskinvare”, “nettverk” and “kommunikasjon” are all VK1 courses in contrary to ”økonomi og informasjonsbehandling” which is a GK. The difference between the courses is that “økonomi og informasjonsbehandling” is mandatory and the five VK1 courses mentioned above are elective. The five courses I mentioned in VK1 have a high percentage of boys attending the courses, in four of the courses the ratio between boys and girls is 14:1[4], and in the last course, “brukersystemer” 1/3 of the students are girls. The boys also get better grades than girls in all of these courses.

A study carried out by Fromme (Fromme, 2003) says that 29 % of girls and 56 % of boys played digital games regularly. Only 2,2 % of the children had never played a digital game. This study was conducted on thousands of schoolchildren. Crawford did a study of how digital gaming may increase gamers interest and knowledge about sports, and in the same study he also found out that there continues to be gender differences in gaming patterns.
50,2 % of female in this study and 93 % of male had played a digital game in the last three months (Cromwell, 2005). This may give boys an advantage in computing compared to girls.

Peter Labudde envestigated how a special learning program specialized for girls would improve the results for girls in physics classes, and change girl’s attitude towards physics. This study did however not provide any evidence that a different approach to learning will have an effect on what results girls achieve in physics or that girl’s attitude towards physics will change(Labudde, 2000). Computers are, like physics, a gendered subject, and the ideas presented in this article might be relevent in gender resarch in context of computers too.

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General problem:
Some computer activities are perceived as “gendered”. Chatting, e-mail and typewriting is concidered gender-neutral or feminine activities while programming, database and computer games are concidered masculine activities (Corneliussen, 2002). How boys and girls approach computing will depend on where they place themselves in the connotation of the computer activities they are supposed to perform. How can the gap between boys and girls and their understanding of some computer activities as “gendered” be reduced? Is it possible to remove the “gendered” idea of some computer activities and make those activities gender neutral?

Top of the post

Hypothesis:
If gaming and blogging are introduced as part of mandatory classes in videregående, then the students will experience a more positive attitude towards computers. The differences between girls and boys in attitude and motivation for using computers will be reduced, and maybe disappear completely. Gaming and blogging as part of mandatory classes will increase the students interest and motivation for using computers.

Top of the post

Method:
I want to study how gaming and blogging in school affects the motivation and the interest for computers, and how there are differences between girls and boys in interest and motivation for using computers. I want to do this by first measuring how interested and motivated the students are in computers, what the main topics of interest in computers are, and what the students think of their own skills in different topics of computing. Such topics can be gaming, the use of internet, blogging, designing websites, programming and the use of applications like Word, Excel… It would also be of interest to measure their actual skills in addition to making them range themselves, but I am not sure whether that would take focus off what I want to find out, and that is not if they are able to rank themselves in their skills, but if their motivation and interest of computers changes when introduced to a “fun” kind of teaching instead of traditional classes.To study this I want to, as I have already mentioned, measure the motivation of the student and their attitude towards the use of computers, and then introduce something new in class; gaming and blogging. The blogging is mainly introduced as a way to collect more data from the students, but I might also find some interesting data on how the students customize their blogs, whether they use them for other purposes, and if and how they communicate with each other through the blogs. The blogging sessions will take place immediately after a gaming session in class, and everybody will be asked to blog immediately after a gaming session, and the blogging shall be about the gaming session. I will not encourage the students to blog or play the game outside of class, but make it clear that they are allowed to do so. Part of my hypothesis is that they will become interested in computers, and will want to learn more on their own.
I am partly following the rules of building an experiment. I intend to state a hypothesis. I also intend to state what would disprove my hypothesis, and I want to conduct a study. My selection of students will not be random since the class I am going to use for my experiment is already chosen. It is random in the sense that I do not know any of the students, I am using this particular class because I have a friend that teaches – and she is allowing me to experiment on her students. I also want to have a control group in another school and do the same measurements in that control group. The results from both groups will be compared to my hypothesis. Since the classes are located in different places I assume that it is not likely they will meet and talk to each other about this study. By using a control group like this I will have more data to base my analysis and conclusion on.
This means that what I will do is to create a quasi-experiment to collect and analyze data. A quasi-experiment is when I as a scientist take advantage of a natural situation in order to investigate circumstances which the objects of my study will not be able to manipulate themselves. I will be manipulating variables but I will not be able to fully control them as I will carry out this study in a natural environment, and there may be several factors which can influence the results that I have no possible way of measuring. If there is an effect after two months of gaming and blogging, what has caused the results? Will the gaming have caused the results, or the blogging, or maybe the idea of being in a research project? How can I seperate the factors so that it is possible to indicate which factor has had the most influence? I believe that a qualitative study of the blogging will give me a lot of data which can indicate whether it is the blogging or the gaming which have had more influence on the students. My control group will give me the data I need to adjust the results so that I can exclude my presence in the class as a factor.
As mentioned it will not be possible for me to remove all the external factors and isolate just what I want to measure and this is the reason for having a control group.
During this experiment there will also be a risk of me affecting the results of the experiment by my presence. The student’s knowledge that they are part of an experiment can affect the results and maybe even the conclusion of the experiment. The other class, the one that I will use as a control group will not be identical to my research group since they are located on another school, and they might have more or less resources than my research group. The teaching in each of the classes may also affect the result if it differs much between the two classes, but since the two classes have the same teacher, I believe this factor will be the easiest to prove irrelevant.

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References:
Books:
Frønes, Ivar, Digitale skiller – Utfordringer og strategier, 2002, Fagbokforlaget Vigmostad Bjørke AS, Bergen, Norway

Doctoral thesis:
Corneliussen, Hilde, Diskursens makt – individets frihet – Kjønnede posisjoner i diskursen om data, 2002, Dr. art. avhandling 2002, Seksjon for humanistisk informatikk, Det historisk-filosofiske fakultet, Unviersitetet i Bergen
Lagesen, Vivian Anette, Extreme make-over? – The making of gender and computer science, 2005, Doctoral thesis for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor (PhD), Faculty of Arts, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Articles:
Crawford, Garry, Digital Gaming, Sport and Gender, 2005, Leisure Studies, vol. 24, issue 3, p. 259-270, Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
Fromme, Johannes, Computer games as a part of children’s culture, 2003, Game Studies, vol. 3, issue 1, available online: http://www.gamestudies.org/0301/fromme/
Gansmo et al, Forget the hacker? A critical re-appraisal of Norwegian studies of gender and ICT, ed Lie, Merete, He, She and IT revisited, 2003, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS, Oslo, Norway
Håpnes et al, Gendering technology – Young girls negotiating ICT and gender, ed Lie, Merete, He, She and IT revisited, 2003, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS, Oslo, Norway
Labudde, Peter, Girls and physics: teaching and learning strategies tested by classroom interventions in grade 11, 2000, International Journal of Science Education, vol. 22, no. 2, p. 143-157, Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
Lagesen, Vivian, Advertising computer science to women (or was it the other way around?), ed Lie, Merete, He, She and IT revisited, 2003, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS, Oslo, Norway
Lie, Merete, Gender and ICT – new connections, ed Lie, Merete, He, She and IT revisited, 2003, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS, Oslo, Norway
Sørensen et al, Kvantitet og kvalitet – Strategier for å løse “jenter og data”- problemet, ed Sigmundsson et al, Læring – Grunnbok i læring teknologi og samfunn, 2004, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, Norway

Internet:
http://datajenter.ntnu.no/jd/omjenterogdata.php?jenterogdata=true&omjenterogdata=true [19.10.2005]
http://www.holah.karoo.net/experimentalmethod1.htm [24.10.2005]
http://www2.udir.no/eway/?pid=207 [04.11.2005]
http://www2.udir.no/stati/karakstat/04/vigo_gk/xindex.html [04.11.2005]
http://www2.udir.no/stati/karakstat/04/vigo_vk1/xindex.html [04.11.2005]
http://www.gamestudies.org/0301/fromme/ [10.11.2005]

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Appendix A – Rules of an empirical experiment

The rules of an empirical experiment are:
-An experiment must state a hypothesis
-It must state what would disprove the hypothesis
-It must conduct a controlled study, where one removes all the external factors and isolate just the factors one wishes to test
-It must measure results and
-It must compare the results with the original hypothesis

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[1] URL: http://datajenter.ntnu.no/jd/omjenterogdata.php?jenterogdata=true&omjenterogdata=true [19.10.2005]
[2] http://www2.udir.no/eway/?pid=207 [04.11.2005]
[3] http://www2.udir.no/stati/karakstat/04/vigo_gk/xindex.html [04.11.2005]
[4] http://www2.udir.no/stati/karakstat/04/vigo_vk1/xindex.html [04.11.2005]

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I am currently working on my third draft for my master thesis. This is what I have so far…

General problem:
Some computer activities are perceived as “gendered”. Chatting, e-mail and typewriting is concidered gender-neutral or feminine activities while programming, database and computer games are concidered masculine activities (Corneliussen, 2002). How boys and girls approach computing will depend on where they place themselves in the connotation of the computer activities they are supposed to perform. How can the gap between boys and girls and their understanding of some computer activities as “gendered” be reduced? Is it possible to remove the “gendered” idea of some computer activities and make those activities gender neutral?

Theoretic background:
In 2001, 86% of men and 77% of women under the age of 40 in Norway had used a computer in the last month (Frønes, 2002). This shows that most of the population in Norway uses computers on a regular basis, and the difference between men and women is 9%, hence men are more active users then women. If one does only concider gender and not age, there is an increase in differences between men and women. There are also differences based on gender when looking at who has access to computers (Frønes, 2002).

Both boys and girls use computers for schoolwork, but when it comes to gaming there is a difference in gender. Frønes suggests a hypothesis where he says that the differences between boys and girls in relation to computers has to do with what they choose to spend their time doing – boys want to play computer games and girls want to read books.

Young people go through a phase where they need to find out who they are (Lie 2003, Håpnes og Rasmussen) and what they want, and to be able to do that, girls tend to position themselves according to other girls – (Lie 2003, Håpnes og Rasmussen, Bjerrum Nilsen og Rudberg 1994, Kleven 1992). They do not want to stand out compared to girlfriends.

In 1996, Håpnes and Rasmussen carried out a study to find out how girls use and relate to the Internet. Since this study was carried out when the Internet had just become a common property, the conditions for their study will have changed severly. The study is still interesting in the sense that girl’s relations among girls will not change that much over a period of ten years. Håpnes and Rasmussen found that girls are willing to spend hours in front of the computer, but that the purpose had to be different from just playing computer games. Girls found chatting a “legal” activity, according to their references to other girls. Chatting was educational and meaningful, unlike playing computer games, which was a waste of time (Håpnes and Rasmussen, 2002). .

The active use of computer games can be looked at as a way to increase general knowledge about computers, and when girls choose to spend time reading books instead of playing computer games one can expect boys to have more general knowledge about computers than girls have (Frønes, 2002).

The phenomenom I want to study is a typical Western problem, and there are examples that the assumptions I have for my hypothesis can not be applied anywhere else then in Western Europe, or maybe only in Norway. In Malaysia computer science is not concidered masculine at all, it is more concidered as a feminine profession, mainly because in Malaysia masculinity is connected with outdoor profession rather than computing which obviously is an indoor profession. Malaysian women choose computer science because of their enthusiasm for this area or for good career prospects (Lagesen, 2005).

In 1997 NTNU started a project which aim was to get more girls to study computer science. It was called “Jenter og data”, and used ridiculing of male hackers as a way to attract girls to study computer science (Lagesen, 2003). From 1996 to 2002 the percentage of female students increased from 8% to 22%[1]. Ridiculing the hacker as a way to feminize computers has been mentioned as a way of sterotyping both hackers and women (Gansmo et al, 2003). Women should not associate themselves with any of the characteristics that hackers have, even if one of the main characteristics is his expertice in computers, and this campaign results in also stereotyping women as the opposite of hackers.

“Læreplan for videregående opplæring – økonomi og informasjonsbehandling”[2] states that in first class at videregående, all students at “grunnkurs for almenne og økonomisk/administrative fag” is supposed to learn information handling to give all the students a common reference to utilize word processing and spreadsheets, and understand the basic principals of using data bases. The goals of the course is that students should be able to use information technology (IT) for managing text and numbers, make use of different soft ware to solve tasks on their own, understand the connection between techonlogy development and the social consequences of using IT and know about security routines, laws and agreements in the context of IT. This strategy only looks at the practical use of IT at work or keeping accounts at home or in a business.

The statistics for “økonomi og informasjonsbehandling” shows that girls have an avarage grade of 4,0 and boys 3,9. The numbers for exams are 3,4 and 3,3. This shows that girls and boys are almost equal in this course in contrary to language classes (i.e spanish, german, french) where girls can have an average grade up to 1,2 grades higher than boys[3]. The courses “brukersystemer”, “programvare”, “maskinvare”, “nettverk” and “kommunikasjon” are all VK1 courses in contrary to ”økonomi og informasjonsbehandling” which is a GK. The difference between the courses is that “økonomi og informasjonsbehandling” is mandatory and the five VK1 courses mentioned above are elective. The five courses I mentioned in VK1 have a high percentage of boys attending the courses, in four of the courses the ratio between boys and girls is 14:1[4], and in the last course, “brukersystemer” 1/3 of the students are girls. The boys also get better grades than girls in all of these courses.
Hypothesis:
If gaming and blogging are introduced as part of mandatory classes in videregående, then the students will experience a more positive attitude towards computers in general. The differences between girls and boys in attitude and motivation for using computers will be reduced, and maybe disappear completely. Gaming and blogging as part of mandatory classes will increase the students general interest and motivation for using computers.

Method:
I want to create a quasi-experiment to collect and analyze data. A quasi-experiment is when I as a scientist take advantage of a natural situation in order to investigate circumstances which the objects of my study will not be able to manipulate themselves. I will be manipulating variables but I will not be able to fully control them as I will carry out this study in a natural environment, and there may be several factors which can influence the results, that I have no possible way of measuring. If there is an effect after two months of gaming and blogging, what has caused the results? Will the gaming have caused the results, or the blogging, or maybe the idea of being in a research project? How can I seperate the factors so that it is possible to indicate which factor has had the most influence? I believe that a qualitative study of the blogging will give me a lot of data which can indicate whether it is the blogging or the gaming which have had more influence on the students. My control group will give me the data I need to adjust the results so that I can exclude my presence in the class as a factor.
I want to study how gaming and blogging in school affects the general motivation and the general interest for computers, and how there are differences between girls and boys in interest and motivation for using computers. I want to do this by first measuring how interested and motivated the students are in computers, what the main topics of interest in computers are, and what the students think of their own skills in different topics of computing. Such topics can be gaming, the use of internet, blogging, designing websites, programming and the use of applications like Word, Excel… It would also be of interest to measure their actual skills in addition to making them range themselves, but I am not sure whether that would take focus off what I want to find out, and that is not if they are able to rank themselves in their skills, but if their motivation and interest of computers in general changes when introduced to a “fun” kind of teaching instead of traditional classes.To study this I want to, as I have already mentioned, measure the motivation of the student and their attitude towards the use of computers, and then introduce something new in class; gaming and blogging. The blogging is mainly introduced as a way to collect more data from the students, but I might also find some interesting data on how the students customize their blogs, whether they use them for other purposes, and if and how they communicate with each other through the blogs. The blogging sessions will take place immediately after a gaming session in class, and everybody will be asked to blog after a gaming session – about the gaming session. I will not encourage the students to blog or play the game outside of class, but make it clear that they are allowed to do so. Part of my hypothesis is that they will become interested in computers in general, and will want to learn more on their own.

The rules of an empirical experiment are as follows:
-An experiment must state a hypothesis
-It must state what would disprove the hypothesis
-It must conduct a controlled study, where one removes all the external factors and isolate just the factors one wishes to test
-It must measure results and
-It must compare the results with the original hypothesis

So far I am just partly following the rules of building an experiment. I intend to state a hypothesis. I also intend to state what would disprove my hypothesis, and I want to conduct a study. Whether I will be able to fully control the study I am not sure, since I am not intending to perform the experiment in a closed environment. I want the students to stay in class, act as normal as possible, and just introduce two changes in class – the gaming and the blogging. My selection of students will not be random since the class I am going to use for my experiment is already chosen. It is random in the sense that I do not know any of the students, I am using this particular class because I have a friend that teaches – and she is allowing me to experiment on her students. I also want to have a control group in another school and do the same measurements in that control group. Since the classes is physically located in different places I assume that it is not likely they will meet and talk to each other about this study. By using a control group like this I will have more data to base my analysis and conclusion on.As mentioned it will not be possible for me to remove all the external factors and isolate just what I want to measure and this is the reason for having a control group. I will of course measure the results in both groups and compare the results to my hypothesis.

During this experiment there will also be a risk of me affecting the results of the experiment by my presence. The student’s knowledge that they are part of an experiment can affect the results and maybe even the conclusion of the experiment. The other class, the one that I will use as a control group will not be identical to my research group since they are located on another school, and they might have more or less resources than my research group. The teaching in each of the classes may also affect the result if it differs much between the two classes, but since the two classes have the same teacher, I believe this factor will be the easiest to prove irrelevant.

References:
Books:
Frønes, Ivar, Digitale skiller – Utfordringer og strategier, 2002, Fagbokforlaget Vigmostad Bjørke AS, Bergen, Norway

Doctoral thesis:
Corneliussen, Hilde, Diskursens makt – individets frihet – Kjønnede posisjoner i diskursen om data, 2002, Dr. art. avhandling 2002, Seksjon for humanistisk informatikk, Det historisk-filosofiske fakultet, Unviersitetet i Bergen
Lagesen, Vivian Anette, Extreme make-over? – The making of gender and computer science, 2005, Doctoral thesis for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor (PhD), Faculty of Arts, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Articles:
Sørensen et al, Kvantitet og kvalitet – Strategier for å løse “jenter og data”- problemet, ed Sigmundsson et al, Læring – Grunnbok i læring teknologi og samfunn, 2004, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, Norway
Gansmo et al, Forget the hacker? A critical re-appraisal of Norwegian studies of gender and ICT, ed Lie, Merete, He, She and IT revisited, 2003, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS, Oslo, Norway
Lie, Merete, Gender and ICT – new connections, ed Lie, Merete, He, She and IT revisited, 2003, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS, Oslo, Norway
Håpnes et al, Gendering technology – Young girls negotiating ICT and gender, ed Lie, Merete, He, She and IT revisited, 2003, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS, Oslo, Norway
Lagesen, Vivian, Advertising computer science to women (or was it the other way around?), ed Lie, Merete, He, She and IT revisited, 2003, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS, Oslo, Norway

Internet:
http://datajenter.ntnu.no/jd/omjenterogdata.php?jenterogdata=true&omjenterogdata=true [19.10.2005]
http://www.holah.karoo.net/experimentalmethod1.htm [24.10.2005]
http://www2.udir.no/eway/?pid=207 [04.11.2005]
http://www2.udir.no/stati/karakstat/04/vigo_gk/xindex.html [04.11.2005]
http://www2.udir.no/stati/karakstat/04/vigo_vk1/xindex.html [04.11.2005]
[1] URL: http://datajenter.ntnu.no/jd/omjenterogdata.php?jenterogdata=true&omjenterogdata=true [19.10.2005]

[2] http://www2.udir.no/eway/?pid=207 [04.11.2005]
[3] http://www2.udir.no/stati/karakstat/04/vigo_gk/xindex.html [04.11.2005]
[4] http://www2.udir.no/stati/karakstat/04/vigo_vk1/xindex.html [04.11.2005]

http://www2.udir.no/eway/?pid=207 [04.11.2005]
http://www2.udir.no/stati/karakstat/04/vigo_gk/xindex.html [04.11.2005]
http://www2.udir.no/stati/karakstat/04/vigo_vk1/xindex.html [04.11.2005]