MOTIVATE: Bringing Out the Fun with 3-D Printing and E-Textiles for Middle- and High-School Girls

Women, and more specifically, minority women, continue to be largely underrepresented in computing. In 2008, of the roughly 20% of women who were awarded bachelor’s degrees in computer science (CS), only 5% were minority women 47 . This lack of ethnic diversity within gender diversity compounds the exigent need to promote and support minority women into the S&E pipeline. In the paper, we describe the MOTIVATE framework, developed to expose African American girls to CS, through a summer program for middleand high-school girls. We describe our experiences implementing the framework that also included Do It Yourself (DIY) activities in 3D printing and e-textiles, and our results from its pilot evaluation showing that we were able to change the girls’ perceptions about computing.