Long Term Effects of Pair Programming

Abstract

Contribution: This paper provides evidence for the benefits of pair programming early in the curriculum on student performance later in the curriculum. It also confirms the short term benefits of partnerships at scale. Background: Engineers often work in teams, both in industry and in academia. Previous work has shown that partnered programming yields higher student performance during the course in which students partner. Research Questions: This paper investigates the long term effects of early curriculum pair programming on student performance in a following course. Specifically, do student partnerships impact long-term student performance in a later course? Are previously observed effects of partner programming robust to a larger sample size? Methodology: This quantitative analysis examines 2468 students in an introductory computer science sequence at a large, public research institution. The data set comprises two academic years and includes partnership participation, project and exam scores, withdraw rates, time between courses, GPA, and gender. Findings: A positive relationship is observed between partnering in an introductory course, and higher project scores in a future course, where all students worked alone ( $N = 1003$ ). Students with the lowest GPAs experienced the greatest benefits. Additionally, results with a large population of students confirm the observations of previous research, showing that partnerships are associated with an overall positive grade impact during the course in which the partnership takes place ( $N = 2468$ ).