Three Contrasting Pairs’ Collaborative Programming Processes in China’s Secondary Education

Abstract

Pair programming is a collaborative learning mode to foster novice learners’ computer programming. Previous empirical research has reported contrasting conclusions about the effect of pair programming on student learning. To further understand students’ pair programming, this study uses a mixed method to analyze three contrasting pairs’ collaborative behaviors, discourses, and perceptions from a multi-dimensional perspective. The analysis results show that the high-ranked student pair is characterized as the interactive, socially-supportive, and goal-oriented pair; the middle-ranked student pair is characterized as the highly-interactive, socially-supportive, and process-oriented pair; and the low-ranked student pair is characterized as the lowly-interactive, socially-unsupportive, and programming-distracted pair. The research reveals complex relations between collaborative behaviors, discourses, and performances, which have critical influences on students’ pair programming quality. Based on the results, this research proposes pedagogical, analytical, and theoretical implications for future instructional design, learning analytics, and empirical research of collaborative programming.

Adopting distributed pair programming as an effective team learning activity: a systematic review

“…Tsai et al (2015) suggested that students’ germane cognitive load cannot be significantly reduced by sharing the workload. As a result of the complex nature of DPP, to fulfill its advantages as a learning approach and mitigate the disadvantages, suitable interventions and facilitation provided by the instructor when implementing this approach are critical (Sun et al, 2020 ).…”

Development of Group Cognition in Online Collaborative Problem-Solving Processes

“…Third, because group cognition emphasizes that group knowledge exceeds that of all members’ personal understanding, future work should integrate students’ mental, perceived sense of knowledge, as a complementary, to understand the relations between individual knowledge acquisition and the group knowledge structure from a cognitive perspective (Akkerman et al., 2007; Kirschner et al., 2018; Schneider et al., 2020). Traditional qualitative methods (e.g., observation, interview, survey, reflection) can be used to understand students’ perceptions about individual and group knowledge before, during, and after the collaborative learning (e.g., Sun et al., 2021). Overall, this research argues that a mixed method, particularly a combination of the quantitative equation and qualitative microanalysis, serves as an appropriate method for making a better understanding of group cognition.…”

Multimodal learning analytics of collaborative patterns during pair programming in higher education

“…Recently, PP has been widely used as a learning approach in higher education to promote active learning (Hawlitschek et al, 2022). PP emphasizes that knowledge is not considered as predefined and structural information delivered from instructors but is explored and constructed by students during the collaborative process of programming and debugging (Sun et al, 2020). Moreover, empirical studies have indicated that PP has potential in arousing novice learners' motivation and interests in computer science (Chittum et al, 2017), fostering their computational thinking skills (Romero et al, 2017), and improving their problem-solving abilities in reality (Beck & Chizhik, 2013).…”

“…Based on the previous relevant literature ( Díez-Palomar et al, 2021;Pekrun et al, 2002;Rogat & Adams-Wiggins, 2015;Sun et al, 2020Sun et al, , 2021, a coding framework was proposed to analyze the process data of PP on the verbal communication, operational behavior, and facial expression dimensions (see Table 3). The coding procedure were completed by three raters.…”

“…Grounded upon the sociocultural perspective of learning (Vygotsky, 1978), collaborative problem-solving (CPS) focuses on group members' knowledge construction and meaningful practices through continuous interactions and idea improvement with the technological and pedagogical supports (Hmelo-Silver & DeSimone, 2013;Stahl, 2009). Pair programming (PP), as a mode of CPS in computer programming education, asks students work together to solve challenging programming tasks, improve computational thinking, and enhance real-world problem-solving ability (Beck & Chizhik, 2013;Chittum et al, 2017;Sun et al, 2020). However, PP is a complex phenomenon, in which multiple modals (e.g., communication, behavior, socio-emotion, etc.…”