Female-focused, grassroots communities purporting to help women learn to code are popping up in a variety of settings, indicating the motivation on the part of the participants to evade male-dominated settings while learning. However, little is known about how these groups function as an activity system. With current technology enabling the forming of virtual communities and the meteoric rise in use of the Salesforce CRM (customer relationship management) platform, a group of women have formed a coaching and learning community designed to help women move from Salesforce administrators to software developers through learning to code. We used activity systems analysis (ASA) to investigate this real-world instance of the larger phenomenon using an ethnographic approach. We used ASA to organize and make sense of the data by first creating a table listing the points on the activity system triangle (subject, rules, object, etc.) and filling in the points of the triangle based on the design of the coaching and learning group as described by participants; this gave us a high-level view of the activity system. To understand the subjects’ point of view of the system, we then created a new column in the table to fill in themes that emerged from our qualitative data analysis organized by dimension of the activity system. This process enabled us to capture the activity and the voices of participants as well as tensions that had emerged in the system. Findings show a range of outcomes, from participants crediting the group as a kickstart to the journey to successfully landing a job as a developer to members stalling in their progress after involvement. Results also show that purposeful tensions of welcoming novice questions and offering unsolicited verbal encouragement built into the activity system create a welcoming, safe environment for women learning to code.

中文翻译：

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非正式女性学习编程社区的兴起

旨在帮助女性学习编程的以女性为中心的草根社区正在各种环境中涌现，这表明参与者在学习时有逃避男性主导环境的动机。然而，人们对这些群体如何作为一个活动系统运作知之甚少。随着当前技术能够形成虚拟社区以及 Salesforce CRM（客户关系管理）平台的使用迅速增加，一群女性已经形成了一个辅导和学习社区，旨在帮助女性通过学习从 Salesforce 管理员转变为软件开发人员编码。我们使用活动系统分析 (ASA) 使用人种学方法来研究这个更大现象的真实世界实例。我们使用 ASA 来组织和理解数据，首先创建一个表格，列出活动系统三角形上的点（主题、规则、对象等），然后根据教练的设计填充三角形的点，参与者描述的学习小组；这为我们提供了活动系统的高级视图。为了了解受试者对系统的看法，我们随后在表中创建了一个新列来填写从我们按活动系统维度组织的定性数据分析中出现的主题。这个过程使我们能够捕捉到参与者的活动和声音，以及系统中出现的紧张局势。调查结果显示了一系列结果，从将小组视为成功找到开发人员工作的旅程的起点的参与者，到参与后停滞不前的成员。结果还表明，欢迎新手提问和主动提供内置于活动系统的口头鼓励的有目的的紧张气氛为女性学习编码创造了一个欢迎、安全的环境。