Work in Progress - Effect of Instructional Design and Pair Programming on Student Performance in an Introductory Programming Course

Students perceive online courses differently than traditional courses. Negative perceptions can lead to unfavourable learning outcomes including decreased motivation and persistence. Throughout this review, a broad range of factors that affect performance and satisfaction within the online learning environment for adult learners will be examined including learning outcomes, instructional design and learner characteristics, followed by suggestions for further research, and concluding with implications for online learning pertinent to administrators, instructors, course designers and students. Online learning may not be appropriate for every student. Identifying particular characteristics that contribute to online success versus failure may aid in predicting possible learning outcomes and save students from enrolling in online courses if this type of learning environment is not appropriate for them. Furthermore, knowing these learner attributes may assist faculty in designing quality online courses to meet students’ needs. Adequate instructional methods, support, course structure and design can facilitate student performance and satisfaction.Keywords: online learning; learner characteristics; instructional design; online learning outcomes(Published: 27 August 2015)Responsible Editor: Meg O’Reilly, Southern Cross University, AustraliaCitation: Research in Learning Technology 2015, 23: 26507 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v23.26507

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The effects of pair-programming on performance in an introductory programming course

Proceedings of the 33rd SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education - SIGCSE '02 ◽

10.1145/563340.563353 ◽

2002 ◽

Cited By ~ 107

Author(s):

Charlie McDowell ◽

Linda Werner ◽

Heather Bullock ◽

Julian Fernald

Keyword(s):

Pair Programming ◽

Introductory Programming

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Work In Progress - A Meta-study of Software Tools for Introductory Programming

Proceedings Frontiers in Education 35th Annual Conference ◽

10.1109/fie.2005.1612177 ◽

2006 ◽

Author(s):

P. Gross ◽

K. Powers

Keyword(s):

Software Tools ◽

Introductory Programming ◽

Work In Progress

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Factors Affecting Students’ Performance in Distributed Pair Programming

Journal of Educational Computing Research ◽

10.1177/0735633117749432 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 57 (2) ◽

pp. 513-544 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Stelios Xinogalos ◽

Maya Satratzemi ◽

Alexander Chatzigeorgiou ◽

Despina Tsompanoudi

Keyword(s):

Student Performance ◽

Object Oriented ◽

Object Oriented Programming ◽

Pair Programming ◽

Individual Student ◽

Broadband Internet ◽

Factors Affecting ◽

Final Exams ◽

The Individual ◽

Pair Compatibility

Pair Programming has been shown to increase productivity and code quality not only in professional software development but also in the context of programming education. The provision of broadband Internet access gave rise to Distributed Pair Programming (DPP) enabling two programmers to collaborate remotely. To gain insight into the benefits of DPP, we performed an empirical study on an object-oriented programming course where 62 students carried out assignments through a DPP platform. The goal of the study is to investigate, in the context of DPP, whether prior programming skills (assessed at the level of student, his or her partner and pair) and pair compatibility are related to student performance. To further examine the effect of DPP on learning outcomes, we have studied whether a pair’s performance on DPP assignments is related to the students’ grade. The findings indicate that the student’s actual skill and the pair’s actual skill affect his or her performance in an object-oriented programming course. The results also suggested that there is no association between pair compatibility and his or her own performance. Finally, pair performance on DPP assignments is related to the individual student performance in the final exams. Such evidence can be used to guide instructors when planning DPP assignments and especially when forming student pairs.

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