Holding a one-off girls event can raise awareness of your Dojo, alerting girls and women in your neighbourhood, community, or corporate environment to the fact that you are actively encouraging female participation in your Dojo. Such events may be particularly helpful for beginners who have misconceptions about coding being ‘for boys’, and who as a result have never considered joining a Dojo.
Events focussed on girls can be as informal or as structured as you like. Typically they’ll include a combination of streams covering different content. Ensure that the activities you offer allow a young person to feel a sense of achievement within a short space of time, e.g 20 minutes. Have Ninjas rotate through streams so they are exposed to a number of different methods of learning. Often one-off events include talks by women working in the technology sector about their journey.
Case study by CoderDojo Scotland
While one-off girls events can be hugely popular, it’s important to also highlight figures released by CoderDojo Scotlandshowing that girls whose first attendance is at a mixed Dojo instead are:
almost seven times more likely to subsequently attend at least one other mixed Dojo session
five times more likely to attend more than one mixed Dojo session
Dr. Claire Quigley, of the Glasgow Science Centre Dojo, provided this summary of the case study:
Our least successful intervention was holding three one-off events that were for girls only and had all-female mentor teams. Of the 74 participants, 92% did not return to attend any of the regular Dojos, despite being invited to do so at the event and being sent an email invitation to the next session of the mixed Dojo. This was a surprise, as the events themselves were very popular, with the one in Glasgow for example recording 55 sign-ups and 41 attendees.
Although the reasons for why so many girls didn’t return are unclear, we established possible contributing factors:
The descriptions of the next mixed Dojo sessions were heavy on jargon and competitive terms, and implied that attendees should possess prior knowledge of tech.
The all-girls Dojo events were longer than normal Dojo sessions, in order to give the girls a chance to try out several activities, on the grounds that this would make them more likely to find one which really grabbed their attention. However, the length of the events may have put them off.
Events like this might help to demystify coding, but don’t necessarily give all girls the confidence to enter a mixed environment and work with boys who appear to be more knowledgeable.
The fact that there is a special event for girls may reinforce the ideas that ‘girls don’t code’ and have to be given special treatment.
Considering that so many girls signed up and attended, it appears that there is an interest which is not currently being met in a way that works for girls. So while we didn’t find the events useful, it may be possible to reframe them to avoid negative outcomes while still retaining their positive aspects.
Measures to try to improve one-off event outcomes include:
Encouraging girls to come with a friend or group of friends.
Including girls you already have in your Dojo as peer mentors.
Integrating part of the event with a regular Dojo session, so that attendees can get an idea of what the Dojo is usually like.
Making sure the event is very similar to a regular Dojo session, to give girls a realistic taste of the Dojo experience.
While the results of the research conducted by CoderDojo Scotland are worth noting, it is important to remember that they only collected data about Dojos in Scotland; different results might be found in other countries, for example where the educational system is more segregated.
If you employ this best practice, we recommend that you rigorously monitor whether the number of girls attending your regular Dojos increases or decreases following the event.
If you are considering running a one off girls events just remember to treat it like a regular Dojo, paying particular attention to recruiting female volunteers and the content that will be used.
After the event
Encourage the girls to attend a Dojo regularly by directing all attendees to a Dojo afterwards: hand out flyers, or gather email addresses of the girls (and parents/guardians) to send them event notifications.
At subsequent sessions, record how many girls who attended the one-off event return to your regular Dojo. Please share these numbers with the CoderDojo Foundation, so we can continue to develop our research into the effectiveness of one-off girls events.