itwf 06: "disseminating your good results"

The first panel here is focused on disseminating research, and includes Andrew Bernat, the executive director of the Computing Research Association, Kathryn Bartol of UMCP, Bobby Schnabel of the National Center for Women & IT at UC Boulder, Eileen Trauth of Penn State, and Catherine Weinberger of UC Santa Barbara.

Bernat talks about "what goes wrong?" with getting women involved with computing research. He points out that finding a woman or minority takes more time (because they're scarce resources), and faculty are often under the gun on producing research results. What do we do? "Make it easy." Need to find the people who want to make a difference, and provide them with support--facilities, workshops, reinforcers. And if none of that works, bribe them. (Depressing note: He talks about a program where they did this, and it was really successful, but...only about half of the people participating got tenure. Ouch. What does that say about institutional commitment to these kinds of efforts to broaden participation?!)

Bartol discusses management-related publications and conferences where researchers can disseminate their work, the idea being that the ideas need to get out to business and management faculty who consult with industry. (Why not go straight to the trade press so people industry will see it themselves, though? Probably because there's no reward in academia for publishing that way...)

(I think I'm going to come down with a serious case of powerpoint poisoning before this workshop is over...)

Trauth differentiates between direct interventions (contributing to practice), and indirect interventions (contribution to future research). When we publish in academic channels, we're doing indirect interventions, helping to foster research by others that can build on what we've done. When we work directly with schools and businesses to implement the kinds of changes that our research results suggest would be useful, that's a direct intervention. She tosses out a great line--"What good is power if you can't use it?" So, for example, when asked to chair the SIGMIS conference in 2003, she did so under the condition that the topic be diversity. She also discusses ways she contributes to practice--teaching a human diversity course, giving lectures and presentations. For the lectures, she's not always asked to speak about gender issues, but she brings those issues in by using her gender research as a case study in her discussions of qualitative research methods, etc.

Weinberger shares a striking factoid: women with college degrees in computer science earn 30-50% more than women with degrees in other fields, regardless of age. (Wow. She says her article will be in Eileen Trauth's upcoming Encyclopedia of Gender and IT--would really like to see how that figure was generated. And yes, the encyclopedia is outrageously priced. :P On the one hand, I'd like to say you should ask your local library to consider buying it. On the other, I'm appalled by the price, even for a library, and wonder why this work couldn't have been done as an open online publication...) Another interesting factoid from her article--women are more likely to see themselves as unable to complete CS work than any other field (including medicine).

She offers the suggestion that dissemination should start with teaching undergraduates, and also with teaching faculty. And she suggests that we put together a short guide to the research we've been doing in this field, geared towards busy faculty who don't have the time or inclination to read through this body of work. A short, focused publication that could be easily and inexpensively disseminated. (What a great idea!) She asks "what if new NSF grant recipients were required to spend time online learning about our most compelling research results?"

Last up is Schnabel, talking about "Effective Practices and Dissemination." One of the key areas of focus for NCWIT is "creating a national community of practitioners with a sustaining infrastructure," which has involved creating alliances with academic institutions, K-12 schools, and industry/workforce. They're still trying to learn how to make this an effective organization for social change. Becoming a partner in the alliance carries with it a responsibility to do more than just attend meetings and be "part of the club." It looks like they're doing some interesting things, and they've definitely got some great people working with them.

They're doing a weird thing with questions--people have to write them down on index cards and pass them up, where they'll be read by the moderator. There are fewer than 75 people in the room, so I'm not sure why they aren't letting people voice their own questions.

(I stepped out to get some coffee, and apparently a heated discussion about how research proposals are evaluated, and how faculty are evaluated on research...trying to pick up the pieces of the conversational thread to see if I can figure out what's going on.)

Ah...apparently one of the panel members (who shall remain nameless, as I didn't hear the whole context and don't want to implicate improperly) implied that research into underrepresentation isn't "really research," and that this kind of research doesn't get faculty "fame and fortune" the way other kinds of research do. There's clearly a cultural divide here between the technologists and social scientists. For the social scientists, obviously this is the "real research." For computer scientists, it's harder to make the case for this focus.

This issue has troubled me since my first interactions with the ITWF research community. So much of the research comes from the "outside"--people studying computer science/computer scientists without being a part of that world. I'm often struck by how non-conversant in basic CS concepts and terminology many of the social scientists studying underrepresentation are. But I think it's true that it's very hard for those of us in technology to justify taking time away from our applied research to focus on this topic. In many research universities, it's far more important for junior faculty in technology fields to be doing research in their areas of specialty. The model at CMU, where Margolis and Fisher worked together, is one I'd like to see more often. (In that case, the CS representative was someone with sufficient seniority that they didn't need to worry about things like tenure and promotion--but if that model becomes more widespread, it may become easier for less senior faculty to do similar work.)

There's an interesting side discussion about the CS/IT divide, and the extent to which a faction of CS doesn't see a value in IT. But when CRA goes to the hill, they talk about IT, not CS, because that's where the money goes.

...and that's a wrap. break time. back later. (today's keynote on the "net gen" looks interesting, and I'll definitely blog it)