Making in-class competitions desirable for marginalized groups

Inspired by research that indicates that direct competition is not always comfortable for female students, we redesigned an existing class competition to permit students to choose whether they wished to participate in either direct or indirect competition. We pilot tested it in the Spring of 2013 in a undergraduate/graduate class on introductory artificial intelligence at the University of Oklahoma. Although the results for female students are inconclusive due to their small number, we observed that international students embraced the indirect competitions. This suggests that allowing the option of indirect competition may also appeal other groups of students who can be marginalized in engineering. Our results indicate the international students prefer the less risky option of indirect competition.