I am finally back to work from my parental leave (although only at 40% capacity) and it feels great!

I started off this autumn with a presentation, together with my colleague Anne-Kathrin Peters, on the topic of “Inclusive Computing Education” at KomTeks national conference in Stockholm. Komtek is an organization that arranges CS related activities for children outside of school, as well as provides support for CS teaching for teachers. Komtek had reached out to our research group because they wanted to get more knowledge on how to include a gender perspective in their teaching. During our, almost an hour long presentation, me and Anne talked about the gender gap in computing and presented the social and psychological reasons behind the gap. We also talked about inclusive pedagogical practices, that is, what research tells us works well in a CS classroom. Lastly, I presented my research paper on the experiences of computing instructors with the title: “What Computing Instructors Did Last Summer: Experiences and Lessons Learned” that was accepted to Frontiers in Education last year.

After our presentation we were asked many interesting questions, which led to a vivid discussion. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to address them all but luckily we could continue the talk after our presentation as we were invited to join Komtek for dinner and a virtual reality experience in the center of Stockholm.

On the train back home I felt a surge of happiness to finally be able to contribute to the “real world” with my research and knowledge. This was my first presentation at a non-academic conference and I really enjoyed it.