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

Collaborate to Graduate inside the College Bubble!

[Irate Engineer]

Another symptom of the college bubble - paying more and more for less and less. Even with TAs there is such a flood of students that the grading is overloading the system. Students now can't even get a unambiguous assessment of their capability in a subject.

OK, so now when an employer wants to see grades and transcripts, what should they make of those grades? Was that person riding the coat tails of a smarter partner? Yeah, I'm sure partners would change class to class, but some students are pretty savvy and will know to sit next to the smart kid in class for this reason.

So that looks like a very expensive MOOC

[Anonymous Coward]

- Not allowed to attend classes in-person?
- Lose privileges for daring to go solo?
- Evaluated for shared group work?

So they are making it look more and more pretty much like a very expensive MOOC.