Pair Programming in Higher Education

Abstract

Pair Programming (PP) is a concept involving two programmers working collaboratively, side-by-side on one computer. It has been practiced in industry since the 1970's and has also found a presence in the curriculum in higher education as a tool for teaching students programming. In this paper we present what is known in literature of PP from a pedagogical view and relate this to the SOLO taxonomy, and how PP can be used to achieve different levels of learning. In general it can be concluded that PP brings higher student satisfaction, code quality and learning outcomes, stimulating relational learning from the SOLO perspective. These conclusions are aligned and supported by the broader research field that claims collaborative learning to be an effective way of teaching in higher education. However, this is highly dependent on a correct pair constellation and the performance of the teacher.