Developing collaborative skills early in the CS curriculum in a laboratory environment

The research on teaching and learning over the past 50 years suggests that the early use of collaborative learning leads to higher interest, higher retention, and higher academic performance in students. Early use of these techniques can also increase the sense of belonging for students and can lead to the early development of collaborative skills to prepare students for team experiences in subsequent courses and future careers. During the weekly lab sessions of a second semester introduction to programming course students engaged in collaborative learning experiences through team-based problem solving, project planning, pair programming, and other agile software development practices. Course objectives provided specific goals and criteria for assessment relative to these skills. The assessment in the authors' prior work identified several problem areas which led to specific initiatives to address those problems: (a) instructor-chosen teams, (b) early instruction and reflection on team skills, (c) feedback on team performance, and (d) the use of an IDE that incorporates an automated test-driven development tool. This paper describes the implementation and assessment of these efforts. A significant increase in student team skills from the middle of the semester to the end of the semester was observed.