Mark Zarb

A case study of Facebook use: Outlining a multi-layer strategy for higher education

Many students are looking to appropriate social networking sites, amongst them, Facebook, to enhance their learning experience. A growing body of literature reports on the motivation of students and staff to engage with Facebook as a learning platform as well as mapping such activities to pedagogy and curricula. This paper presents student opinions of the use of a Facebook strategy within higher education through the use of focus groups. Results show that the Facebook strategy is useful in promoting collaborative learning alongside the face-to-face delivery of content. Participants rebuked the perceived blurring of educational and social purposes, which is prevalent in the literature, with the current structure allowing a clear divide between their different uses of the site. The development of further guidelines for the use of Facebook for education is encouraged and recommendations are provided.

Breaking the Communication Barrier: Guidelines to Aid Communication within Pair Programming.

Pair programming is a software development technique with many cited benefits in learning and teaching. However, it is reported that novice programmers find several barriers to pairing up, typically due to the added communication that is required of this approach. This paper will present a literature review discussing the issue of communication, and through a series of observations with industry-based pairs, will derive a set of guidelines which aim to help novice pairs experience better communication within their pairs. An evaluation of the guidelines with undergraduate students is then reported, showing that exposure to these guidelines improved the self-perceived communication experience of novice pairs.

Industry-inspired guidelines improve students' pair programming communication

Novice pair programmers find communication within their pairs to be one of the greatest difficulties they face when starting to pair program. However, developers cannot pair program without a certain amount of communication. This research describes the development of an analytic coding scheme derived from the observation of the communication of expert pairs working in industry. Communication patterns identified from these expert pairs are being used to help novices learn to be more effective in their pair communication.

Understanding communication within pair programming

Communication occurs constantly within a pair whilst they are programming. As examples, a navigator might grunt in approval to a new method the driver has just created, or the pair could have a long conversation discussing requirements and coding strategies. This paper presents a brief background study exploring communication within pair programming, and an investigation which results in the creation of a general analytic coding scheme for expert-expert pair programming. Finally, an experiment is detailed that aims to further explore this field.

Student Concerns Regarding Transition into Higher Education CS

This paper discusses a study where 249 students from 18 secondary schools around Scotland who were on the verge of applying to study Computing Science at a higher education institution were surveyed on their concerns about the upcoming transition. Preliminary conclusions from this work point to the fact that this transition process is one that seems to evolve with the student as they progress through their education, and as such, should be treated differently at various stages within that process.

Evaluating industry-inspired pair programming communication guidelines with undergraduate students

A set of industry-inspired pair programming guidelines have been derived from qualitative examinations of expert pairs in order to aid novice programmers with their intra-pair communication. This research describes the evaluation of these guidelines with a set of student pairs, and demonstrates how novice pairs who were exposed to the guidelines were more comfortable communicating within their pairs.

Further Evaluations of Industry-Inspired Pair Programming Communication Guidelines with Undergraduate Students

Pair programming has several benefits when it is successfully used by students and experts alike. However, research shows that novice pairs find the necessary pair communication to be one of the main challenges in adopting this process. A set of industry-inspired pair programming guidelines have been derived and evaluated from qualitative examinations of expert pairs, with the aim of helping novice programmers communicate within their pair. This research describes a further evaluation of these guidelines with a number of student pairs, and demonstrates how novice pairs who were exposed to the guidelines became comfortable communicating with their partners.

Developing a coding scheme for the analysis of expert pair programming sessions

Communication occurs constantly within pair programming, however, little is known about this communication, and how it changes according to skill or experience. This research presents the creation of a coding scheme, used for the analysis of expert intra-pair communication.

Measuring flow in programming education

Programming is a problematic subject to learn due to various factors that impact teaching, learning, and the environment. This research is concerned with creating a suitable measurement which could be used to compare flow levels achieved between weak and strong novice students, where flow is a state of mind where people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. It is expected that this measure would then be used to analyse other issues in programming education and software engineering.

Non-traditional skills in undergraduate medical education: the development of a teaching programme.

As a junior doctor in what is an increasingly struggling healthcare system, I am concerned to see that many of my junior and senior colleagues have opted not to continue onto the next stage of training. Whilst entrepreneurship, leadership and management are now accepted as important skills for doctors to be exposed to, this is clearly not filtering through to medical education at the undergraduate level. We have surveyed final year medical students regarding this and used these results to develop a national teaching programme which aims to provide junior doctors with skills such as management, leadership and enterprise which they would otherwise not be exposed to.