[Edu-sig] Pair programming

[Timothy Wilson]

Hi everyone,

I'd like to add my $0.02 to Jeff's advice a week or so ago about having the
students work in pairs.

Many of the teachers on this list probably have students paired up in their
classes out of necessity. Fortunately, in my situation I have 30 machines
for 30 students. However, I've only been using 15 machines lately.

It's still early in the year, and I haven't assigned a large project yet
since the students still haven't learned all the syntax. But I have been
using pairs for the daily work of writing little functions and programs.

>From my observations so far, I would suggest that paired programming does a
great job of drawing quiet students into discussions. I noticed that a
number of my students in the first week or so of class were perfectly happy
to sit quietly in class not understanding what was going on. They simply
weren't assertive enough to raise their hands to get my attention. This was
most often observed in my female students. These students are much more
likely to ask their peers questions than they are to ask me. Incidentally, I
also try to pair particularly shy students with a person of their own
gender. There is no doubt that these quiet students are learning more and it
almost certainly helps the students who are answering their questions
too. (You learn more by teaching after all.)

The quality of work produced is also higher. The direct interaction with
another student really helps catch little syntax and logic errors even
before the program is run. 

>From a teacher's standpoint, another great advantage is that I have only 15
groups of students to deal with instead of 30 individuals. Having few
groups/students to visit means more individual attention from me.

So I'd encourage everyone to give it a try. I'm not necessarily going to
work in pairs 100% of the time, but I don't think I'll be using all 30
computers simultaneously very often.

-Tim

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