First-year students' impressions of pair programming in CS1

ABSTRACT

Pair programming, as part of the Agile Development process, has noted benefits in professional software development scenarios. These successes have led to a rise in use of pair programming in educational settings, particularly in Computer Science 1 (CS1). Specifically, McDowell et al. [2006] has shown that students using pair programming in CS1 do better in a CS2 class (with solo programming) than students who don't pair in CS1. This paper seeks to address a similar question, but from a qualitative, student-focused approach. How do students define, experience, and value the pair programming experience? How do they experience and value it compared to solo programming? Does pairing in CS1 impact their confidence in their abilities?

We report on semi-structured interviews with 11 subjects from two institutions where pair programming was used in CS1, and solo programming was used in the CS2. Many of the responses met our expectations; students get stuck less and explore more ideas while pairing, and believe that pair programming helped them in CS1. Other responses were more surprising. Students reported that when solo programming they were more confident and understood their programs better. Many students also said that they started work on their assignments earlier when soloing. Students also continue to use other students as resources even when working "solo."

REFERENCES

• 1: Brian F. Hanks , Charlie Mcdowell, Empirical studies of distributed pair programming, University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, 2005
• 2: Brian Hanks , Charlie McDowell , David Draper , Milovan Krnjajic, Program quality with pair programming in CS1, Proceedings of the 9th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, June 28-30, 2004, Leeds, United Kingdom
• 3: Neha Katira , Laurie Williams , Eric Wiebe , Carol Miller , Suzanne Balik , Ed Gehringer, On understanding compatibility of student pair programmers, Proceedings of the 35th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, March 03-07, 2004, Norfolk, Virginia, USA
• 4: Margolis, J. and Fisher, A. 2002. Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
• 5: Charlie McDowell , Linda Werner , Heather E. Bullock , Julian Fernald, The impact of pair programming on student performance, perception and persistence, Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering, May 03-10, 2003, Portland, Oregon
• 6: Charlie McDowell , Linda Werner , Heather E. Bullock , Julian Fernald, Pair programming improves student retention, confidence, and program quality, Communications of the ACM, v.49 n.8, p.90-95, August 2006 [doi>10.1145/1145287.1145293]
• 7: Grigori Melnik , Frank Maurer, Perceptions of Agile Practices: A Student Survey, Proceedings of the Second XP Universe and First Agile Universe Conference on Extreme Programming and Agile Methods - XP/Agile Universe 2002, p.241-250, August 04-07, 2002
• 8: Lynda Thomas , Mark Ratcliffe , Ann Robertson, Code warriors and code-a-phobes: a study in attitude and pair programming, Proceedings of the 34th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, February 19-23, 2003, Reno, Navada, USA
• 9: Tammy VanDeGrift, Coupling pair programming and writing: learning about students' perceptions and processes, Proceedings of the 35th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, March 03-07, 2004, Norfolk, Virginia, USA
• 10: Linda L. Werner , Brian Hanks , Charlie McDowell, Pair-programming helps female computer science students, Journal on Educational Resources in Computing (JERIC), v.4 n.1, p.4-es, March 2004 [doi>10.1145/1060071.1060075]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education

General Terms:
Human Factors

Keywords:
CS1, Pair programming, debugging, interview, novice, qualitative