Helping students get IT: Investigating the longitudinal impacts of IT school outreach in Australia

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Australia is facing a shortfall in the number of appropriately skilled ICT workers needed for Australia’s future workforce. One avenue to address this issue is for universities and stakeholders to conduct initiatives to attract prospective students to ICT courses, by building self-efficacy and positive attitudes towards ICT careers. Previous gender-focused interventions have reported immediate positive effects in female students’ attitudes and confidence towards IT. There have been, however, no longer-term measures of the longitudinal changes of both male and female students’ attitudes and self-efficacy towards IT from such interventions. This research sought to investigate and compare the longitudinal effects of three different levels of interventions for IT upon primary school-aged students’ attitudes and self-efficacy towards computer programming and their interest to pursue programming.