Surprising Possibilities Imagined And Realized Through Information Technology (Spirit): Attracting High School Students To Information Technology

There has been a significant decline in the number of female students who are interested in pursuing majors in the fields of Information Technology (IT). Additionally, the supply of students educated in IT is less than the current employment demand. The primary goal of the SPIRIT program is to increase high school students’ interests in IT through direct interventions and through secondary contact via high school teachers and guidance counselors. Selected high school students were invited to attend a summer workshop in 2008. Multiple forms of assessment, including pre and post assessments, attitudes measures and self-report, were used to evaluate the impact that the summer workshops had on participants’ IT attitudes and performances. The qualitative and quantitative measures used in this investigation indicate that both the students’ attitudes and performances improved from beginning to end of the one week summer workshop.