Harvey Mudd College in California turned around their undergrad courses and succesfully created a pipeline to pull female undergrads into being computer programmers. They remade Intro to Programming from the least popular freshman course to the MOST popular freshman course with these curricular changes:
- They replaced Java language with the much more intuitive Python language.
- They changed the examples and exercises to things the students found relevant.
- Finally, the course name was changed from Intro to Programming to Problem Solving with Machines.
More at the New York Times Science Times.
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