Girls' Day at the Institute of Computer Science

This year's Girls' Day took place on April 25, 2013, when technical companies, businesses with technical departments and apprenticeships, universities and research centers throughout Germany opened their doors to schoolgirls from grade 5 onwards. The Institute of Computer Science at Clausthal University of Technology once again offered a varied program for interested participants as part of Girls' Day. Joachim Schramm, M.Sc., the organizer of the computer science event: "10 of the 60 schoolgirls who came to the Clausthal Girls' Day were interested in computer science and took part in our workshop".

After an overview lecture on the topic of "What is computer science?", the participants were able to learn about the challenges of collecting and communicating requirements for software systems -- an important activity for software engineers -- by playing a game with Lego bricks. Afterwards, the girls got creative and were allowed to create their first business process models: Using paper, glue and scissors, they crafted activity diagrams describing the process of going to the movies (see photo).

Finally, the participants were able to gain practical experience using the computer-aided collaboration system LASAD. LASAD supports systematic argumentation by collecting pros and cons on certain topics, comparing them with each other and weighing them up against each other. For example, our students discussed whether cell phones should be banned at school, whether a driver's license should be issued at 16 and whether math can be opted out of in the upper grades.

Supervisor Joachim Schramm draws a positive balance: "The response from the participants was unanimously positive to enthusiastic. Six of the ten girls can imagine doing an internship or apprenticeship with us later on or studying computer science."