Empirical Confirmation of Pair Programming Effectiveness in the Teaching of Computer Programming

This paper presents issues of computer programming and results of controlled experiment conducted to evaluate and understand the significance of pair programming in the teaching of programming. It involved 42 second year students attending object-oriented programming in Java, CISM 214 module as an elective at our institution. The experiment assessed the time for task completion, code correctness and quality as well as students' motivation. The results obtained were analyzed as well as hypothesis formulated and tested. The paired samples T-tests showed a statistically reliable difference between the mean number of time taken and the correctness/quality of programming task in individual and pair programming carried out by the students at a significant level of α=0.05 at 95% confidence interval. The results shows that pair programming is more effective in the teaching of programming than traditional approach and confirms several reports on pair programming in the literature. Thus, it would be advantageous to adopt pair programming as a technique for teaching computer programming for beginners.

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