Program quality with pair programming in CS1

  • Authors:

  • Brian Hanks;Charlie McDowell;David Draper;Milovan Krnjajic

  • Affiliations:

  • University of California, Santa Cruz;University of California, Santa Cruz;University of California, Santa Cruz;University of California, Santa Cruz

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 9th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
  • Year:
  • 2004

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Prior research on pair programming has found that compared to students who work alone, students who pair have shown increased confidence in their work, greater success in CS1, and greater retention in computer-related majors. In these earlier studies, pairing and solo students were not given the same programming assignments. This paper reports on a study in which this factor was controlled by giving the same programming assignments to pairing and solo students. We found that pairing students were more likely to turn in working programs, and these programs correctly implemented more required features. Our findings were mixed when we looked at some standard complexity measures of programs. An unexpected but significant finding was that pairing students were more likely to submit solutions to their programming assignments.