Long-Term Effects of Partner Programming in an Introductory Computer Science Sequence (Work in Progress)

Computer scientists often work in teams on complex software projects, and their education often includes group work or pair programming. In the literature, group work and pair programming have been shown to improve student learning outcomes. For example, students programming in pairs produce better programs and have similar exam scores. In this paper, we explore the impact of student partnerships in introductory programming projects on future student performance in subsequent courses. We examine the data from 2,234 students enrolled in introductory computer science courses at a large, highly ranked, public research institution, including participation in group work and performance in two different courses. The first is a second-semester “CS2” programming and introductory data structures course where some students completed projects in partnerships while others worked alone. Students then advanced to a “CS3” course where all students completed projects alone. Both courses are part of the core computer science curriculum for all computer science majors and minors, and are considered gateway courses to specialized upper level courses. In our results, we observed an association between student partnerships and increased project performance during the same semester, confirming the observations of prior work. When examining student performance in the following course (CS3), our largest statistically significant result was for students in the lowest GPA quartile: those who had partnered in CS2 were associated with improved project scores in CS3, where they all worked alone.