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Three Years of Student Pair Programming: Action Research Insights and Outcomes

Published: 17 February 2016 Publication History

Abstract

In the software engineering industry the technique of pair programming can be used as a means of enhancing programmer productivity and the quality of the software development process. Pair programming has also been used in computer science education as a mechanism to address some of the educational challenges faced by students learning to program. An action research study is described in which pair programming is used as part of the learning and assessment regime in introductory programming. Module data has been used over a three year cycle to evaluate the impact of pair programming on student performance and confidence in programming, and to gain insights into its practical application. Within-subject analysis confirms previously reported observations of overall improved student performance. Qualitative analysis identifies areas for refinement in the practical application of pair programming for learning and assessment, particularly in relation to pairwise communication, establishing protocols for conflict resolution and development of professional competencies.

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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGCSE '16: Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education
February 2016
768 pages
ISBN:9781450336857
DOI:10.1145/2839509
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 17 February 2016

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  1. action research
  2. introductory programming
  3. pair programming

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SIGCSE '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 105 of 297 submissions, 35%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 1,787 of 5,146 submissions, 35%

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  • (2024)Assessment on the Effectiveness of GitHub Copilot as a Code Assistance Tool: An Empirical StudyProgress in Artificial Intelligence10.1007/978-3-031-73503-5_3(27-38)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2024
  • (2023)Vision: How to Provide Documentation to Non-skilled Developers for Appropriate Use of Cryptography: Action Research Study on Expert MonitoringProceedings of the 2023 European Symposium on Usable Security10.1145/3617072.3617119(218-223)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
  • (2022)Music, Stories, and Progress ClickersProceedings of the 24th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3511861.3511880(173-180)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2022
  • (2022)Empirical research on pair programming in higher education: a literature reviewComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2022.203950433:3(400-428)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2022
  • (2022)Emerging from the pandemic: instructor reflections and students’ perceptions on an introductory programming course in blended learningEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-022-11328-6Online publication date: 4-Nov-2022
  • (2021)Using Dialogue Analysis to Predict Women's Stress During Remote Collaborative Learning in Computer ScienceProceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3430665.3456369(60-66)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2021
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  • (2020)Strategies for Implementing In-Class, Active, Programming AssessmentsProceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3328778.3366850(454-460)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2020
  • (2020)Recent Studies About Teaching Algorithms (CS1) and Data Structures (CS2) for Computer Science Students2019 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE43999.2019.9028702(1-8)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2020
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