Lessons learned: designing a mobile application for teaching computer science concepts to middle school girls

While the technology field is growing very fast and is important to our day-to-day lives, very few women consider this field as one they would like to pursue. While the reasons for this are primarily cultural, early exposure to these fields is also very important. In this small study, we tested a customized mobile application (App) we designed to teach middle school girls about computer science concepts. We used surveys to determine which content presentation methods were more effective for learning and to find out their perception of the App. We also tracked participants' movements in the App. We found that among our 7 participants, interactive presentation methods seemed to be better for teaching than heavy text-based methods. We also found out that no participant took the same path through the App. We hope the results from this preliminary study will help add to the knowledge of this demographic in both teaching and design work.