Stanford Turns To Pair Programming: 1 CS Education For the Price of 2?

theodp writes: Stanford students may pay $44,184 in tuition, but that may not even entitle them to individually graded homework. The Stanford Daily reports that this quarter, Stanford's Computer Science Department will implement 'pair programming' in the introductory computer science courses CS 106A: Programming Methodology and CS 106B: Programming Abstractions. "The purpose of this change," reports the paper, "is to reduce the increasingly demanding workload for section leaders due to high enrollment and also help students to develop important collaboration skills." The CS 106A Pair Programming Q&A page further explains, "Our enrollments have grown rapidly, and we are trying to explore creative new ways to manage student work that will also reduce the heavy workload on our section leaders," adding that students who don't get with the Pair Programming program and elect to go solo will not be awarded "late days" that can be used to avoid penalties on overdue assignments, unlike their paired classmates. Google in November put out an RFP to universities for its invite-only 3X in 3 Years: CS Capacity Award program, which aimed "to support faculty in finding innovative ways to address the capacity problem in their CS courses," which included a suggestion that "students that have some CS background" should not be allowed to attend in-person intro CS courses. Coincidentally, Google Director of Education and University Relations Maggie Johnson, whose name appeared on the CS Capacity RFP, was Director of Undergraduate Studies in Stanford's CS Department before joining Google.

Comments

Re:Group work

[lgw]

We did this "pair programming" at Rice in the late 80s and early 90s, long before the eXtreme! Programming! "two tards in a box" approach was invented. It seemed to work fine, as long as your goal was education instead of pretending grades matter. There were times when we actually worked together, and the one who "got it" explained to the other, and there were times when the sober one just did his best, but we never learned less because of it.

Re:No! This isn't how pair programming works.

[quantaman]

Pair programming works by having a more experienced coder working along side a less experienced coder. The fruits of that asymmetry is what it's all about.

If you wanted pair programming in an academic setting, it would mean giving a dedicated tutor to every student in that class.

This, however, is just working in pairs. Not the same at all.

The studies I've seen show that novice-novice is still pretty damn effective as a productivity and learning strategy.

Despite the summary I've TA'd 1st year courses and we had a great experience from having people work in groups. 1st year students can spend a lot of time stuck on really simple problems that are due to some weird misconceptions or simply a lack of familiarity. Having them work in pairs means instead of just giving up they start trouble shooting together, when they finally did get to asking a question it was at a much higher level, this meant I could spent more time assisting the individuals or groups who really needed it.

Most importantly the people who go into CS tend to be introverted and terrible collaborators, I know I'm personally far too ready to sludge through problems alone and ask for help far too late. If I'd had some pair-programming experience when I was in undergrad I think I would have benefited immensely.