Pair Programming: Not for Everyone?

- Developments in CS1 pedagogy seek to improve the capabilities of students in their understanding of how to write programs. This involves learning how to solve various types of problems through a systematic approach, a challenging task for most students. "Pair programming" as a pedagogical approach, is one in which students help one another learn how to program by working in pairs on programming assignments. We were interested in using this technique for teaching CS1 topics, to assess applicability in our undergraduate Computer Science curriculum. We implemented pair programming in an offering of CS1, parallel to another offering without paired programming, and compared the results of student performance in each class. In addition we asked the students in the paired programming class about their experiences with paired programming, to gain some measure of how the students felt about the approach. The results were unexpected in that the paired programming students did not sho...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: FECS
• Authors: Jacob P. Somervell
• Keywords: FECS 2006, FECS 2007, Pair Programming, Paired Programming, Programming Students