Linda L. Werner

The effects of pair-programming on performance in an introductory programming course

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of pair-programming on student performance in an introductory programming class. Data was collected from approximately 600 students who either completed programming assignments with a partner or programmed independently. Students who programmed in pairs produced better programs, completed the course at higher rates, and performed about as well on the final exam as students who programmed independently. Our findings suggest that collaboration is an effective pedagogical tool for teaching introductory programming.

Pair programming improves student retention, confidence, and program quality

Pair programming produces more proficient, confident programmers---and may help increase female representation in the field.

Computer games created by middle school girls: Can they be used to measure understanding of computer science concepts?

Computer game programming has been touted as a promising strategy for engaging children in the kinds of thinking that will prepare them to be producers, not just users of technology. But little is known about what they learn when programming a game. In this article, we present a strategy for coding student games, and summarize the results of an analysis of 108 games created by middle school girls using Stagecast Creator in an after school class. The findings show that students engaged in moderate levels of complex programming activity, created games with moderate levels of usability, and that the games were characterized by low levels of code organization and documentation. These results provide evidence that game construction involving both design and programming activities can support the learning of computer science concepts.

Pair-programming helps female computer science students

Pair-programming has been found to be very beneficial in educational settings. Students who pair in their introductory programming course are more confident, have greater course completion and pass rates, and are more likely to persist in computer-related majors. Although pairing helps all students, we believe that it is particularly beneficial for women because it addresses several significant factors that limit womens participation in computer science. We provide reasons for our belief that pair-programming helps women persist in these majors. We also repeat, with special emphasis on the impact on women, some details published elsewhere regarding our experiments on pair-programming with college and university students. Additionally, we provide new data that supports our original findings.

Building pair programming knowledge through a family of experiments

Pair programming is a practice in which two programmers work collaboratively at one computer on the same design, algorithm, code, or test. Pair programming is becoming increasingly popular in industry and in university curricula. A family of experiments was run with over 1200 students at two US universities, North Carolina State University and the University of California Santa Cruz, to assess the efficacy of pair programming as an alternative learning technique in introductory programming courses. Students who used the pair programming technique were at least as likely to complete the introductory course with a grade of C or better when compared with students who used the solo programming technique. Paired students earned exam and project scores equal to or better than solo students. Paired students had a positive attitude toward collaboration and were significantly more likely to be registered as computer science-related majors one year later. Our findings also suggest that students in paired classes continue to be successful in subsequent programming classes continue to be successful in subsequent programming classes that require solo programming.

The fairy performance assessment: measuring computational thinking in middle school

Computational thinking (CT) has been described as an essential capacity to prepare students for computer science, as well as to be productive members of society. But efforts to engage K-12 students in CT are hampered by a lack of definition and assessment tools. In this paper, we describe the first results of a newly created performance assessment tool for measuring CT in middle school. We briefly describe the context for the performance assessment (game-programming courses), the aspects of CT that are measured, the results, and the factors that are associated with performance. We see the development of assessment tools as a critical step in efforts to bring CT to K-12, and to strengthen the use of game programming in middle school. We discuss problems and implications of our results.

Experimenting with pair programming in the classroom

There is now a substantial body of evidence in support of the use of pair programming in the classroom[3, 4, 10, 11, 13, 14]. Some of the data is anecdotal and some is the result of formal experiments. We are not aware of any published data that raises concerns about allowing students to complete programming projects using pair programming.In this paper we present data from three studies performed at UCSC. All three studies support the position that pair programming results in more student learning.

The Girls Creating Games Program: Strategies for Engaging Middle-School Girls in Information Technology

There is a clear need to increase girls’ leadership in technology. The number of female undergraduates in computer science declined from 37 percent in 1984 to 27 percent in 1997.1 Females make up only 20 percent of high school students who take the advanced placement test in computer science.2 Hispanic females make up the smallest percentage of any group, comprising only 1 percent of all computer science AP test takers in 1999.3 These statistics show the need for interventions that can increase the interest and ability of female students to persist in computer science classes, and ultimately in computer technology-related careers. In this paper, we describe Girls Creating Games (GCG), an after-school and summer program for sixththrough eighth-grade girls designed to address the barriers to girls’ active participation in information technology (IT). As others have done in coed settings,4 we put girls in the role of designer by teaching them to program an interactive computer game.

Middle school girls + games programming = information technology fluency

In this paper we describe an after-school program that aims to develop information technology (IT) fluency by teaching middle school girls to make computer games. We focus on IT fluency rather than IT literacy because to participate in the current and future world of technology, students must develop fluency in three kinds of IT knowledge: contemporary skills, fundamental concepts, and intellectual capabilities rather than just literacy skills. The acquisition of fluency is more likely to happen in the context of a program like ours because of its emphasis on project-based work and a collaborative learning environment utilizing pair programming. The details of how IT fluency knowledge was acquired in the game programming part of our program are published elsewhere, so we only summarize those results here. The focus of this paper is on how participants have made substantial strides toward IT fluency due to aspects of our program as a whole. In this paper we provide many examples of how our program leads to IT fluency by addressing not just contemporary IT skills, but also intellectual capabilities and fundamental IT concepts.

Children learning computer science concepts via Alice game-programming

Programming environments that incorporate drag-and-drop methods and many pre-defined objects and operations are being widely used in K-12 settings. But can middle school students learn complex computer science concepts by using these programming environments when computer science is not the focus of the course? In this paper, we describe a semester-long game-programming course where 325 middle school students used Alice. We report on our analysis of 231 final games where we measured the frequency of successful execution of programming constructs. Our results show that many games exhibit successful uses of high level computer science concepts such as student-created abstractions, concurrent execution, and event handlers.We discuss the implications of these results for designing effective game programming courses for young students.