Agile Development Conference (ADC'05)
Undergraduate Student Perceptions of Pair Programming and Agile Software Methodologies: Verifying a Model of Social Interaction
Denver, Colorado
July 24-July 29
ISBN: 0-7695-2487-7
Kelli M. Slaten, Dept. of Mathematics Education, North Carolina State University
Laurie Williams, Dept. of Computer Science, North Carolina State University
Lucas Layman, Dept. of Computer Science, North Carolina State University
One of the reasons that undergraduate students, particularly women and minorities, can become disenchanted with computer science education is because software development is wrongly characterized as a solitary activity. We conducted a collective case study in a software engineering course at North Carolina State University to ascertain the effects of a collaborative pedagogy intervention on student perceptions. The pedagogy intervention was based upon the practices of agile software development with a focus on pair programming. Six representative students in the course participated in the study. Their perspectives helped validate a social interaction model of student views. The findings suggest that pair programming and agile software methodologies contribute to more effective learning opportunities for computer science students and that students understand and appreciate these benefits.
Citation:
Kelli M. Slaten, Sarah B. Berenson, Laurie Williams, Lucas Layman, Maria Droujkova, "Undergraduate Student Perceptions of Pair Programming and Agile Software Methodologies: Verifying a Model of Social Interaction," adc, pp.323-330, Agile Development Conference (ADC'05), 2005