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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.
Makes sense, right?
Students go to school to learn.
I always did better with personal access to my teachers and I never knew more than the teacher/instructor/professor (that is, Not Graduate "Assistants").
I always did better with personal attention. Some concepts are not easy to grasp.
But Standford, refusing to hire more "Educational Helpers" gets the students to teach each other.
And they wrap this dismal plan in teaching the student how to work together. (I always liked linking my fate to ignorant classmates.)
More money for less education.
Bunch of turds.
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.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
- 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.
The education bubble has been something people have been talking about for years. It is coming. What am I getting from most of these classes that I couldn't get from a good online course? Or better yet an online course with some sort of proctor in a class room that managed the class? professor isn't going to grade my work anyway. So what is the difference?
That way at least you might get a top class lecturer.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
they used to call this EXTREME PROGRAMMING 12+ years ago and were pitting programming as pairs as the hottest thing since sliced bread.
just goes on to show that the teaching programming and how the programs should be structured and all that.. they don't know, so they just change whatever every year a little bit for sake of changing things and then when there's enough years it goes back in cycle, sometimes with a new name for the old thing. I think they were just calling it XP back then because there were athlon XP's and windows xp around..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
So everyone is pushing CS and STEM as hard as they can, but the schools don't have the manpower to support the influx of students? That's Brilliant.
That just means the school is better preparing its students for the real world.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
I stole this Sig