Design and Evaluation of a Web-based Distributed Pair Programming Tool for Novice Programmers
Résumé
Research on pair programming (PP) in education have shown a number of positive outcomes for learners, and especially novice programmers, such as enhanced learning, greater confidence in work quality, higher problem solving skills or enhanced interaction skills, and promotes collaborative learning. Due to these diverse advantages, pair programming in education currently follows a growing curve. Also, blended learning approaches are becoming more and more popular in education, including when learners have to learn programming. As a consequence, distributed pair programming (DPP) can be considered as a good solution to support pair programming in hybrid learning scenarios. A large number of tools from both the research community and the major integrated development environment (IDE) editors tried to study and implement DPP in their tools. However, our review of literature shows that none of them meet the requirements for delivering effective pair programming activities to novice programmers in blended learning scenarios. Based on these findings, the paper introduces a new DPP application especially designed for novice programmers. Itintegrates, based on some requirements identified from previous research, several features dedicated to DPP as well as other capabilities supporting extensive data collection and learning analytics. The tool has been experimented in authentic learning settings in higher education with 82 students, both in PP and DPP conditions.The experiment showed no evidence of a difference between PP and DPP on the students’ perceived usability of the application, as well as on the quality of their productions.
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