[Edu-sig] 9. Best approach to teaching OOP and graphics

[Lloyd Hugh Allen]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 17:59:26 +1100 (EST), Darren Payne
<inxdr at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> Pair programming is fine and works best when both are
> of equal ability. I would encourage you to avoid
> putting a stronger / more able person with a weaker /
> less able person - the stronger one will get very
> little out of it and can become quite resentful.

Although this is in general true...

(and in fact, when I assign pairs I most often do it in one of two ways:
* students with the top two grades are partners, next two, next two, and so on
* Highest grade gets to pick partner from the class. Next highest
grade that is not already on a team gets to pick partner from the
class. Kind of like picking teams for team dodgeball, but with smaller
teams)

...I remember a few counterexamples from my own experience. In most of
these cases the (or three) programmers of heterogenous ability had a
good personal relationship going into the project. In one case, the
weaker programmer had a support role designing and implementing the
procedure that would draw static graphics to the screen, while the
stronger programmer wrote the logic etc.; in another case, the
programmers had romantic ties that I exploited. For the lovebirds, I
told them ahead of time that the weaker programmer (the boy) would
have to be able to walk me through the code when they were done, and
he was in fact able to do so.

But yes, homogenous groups (e.g., the first strategy for picking
groups above) definitely have their place. Be prepared to give lots
and lots of support to your bottoms if you use that strategy.