A Two-Year Evaluation of Distributed Pair Programming Assignments by Undergraduate Students

Pair Programming (PP) has a long history, both in education and the software industry. More recently, specially designed environments have made the application of Distributed Pair Programming (DPP) possible, as well. In the context of an undergraduate Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) course, DPP has been applied for 5 years. Specifically, we have used the educational DPP system of SCEPPSys in Java programming assignments. In this paper, we analyze students’ responses to a questionnaire that was completed at the end of the course, for two consecutive academic years. This was in conjunction with data from the log files of SCEPPSys, as well as data regarding the performance of students in their assignments and exams, in order to validate the questionnaire results. This study aims to investigate students’ experiences and perceptions in DPP assignments. The following issues are examined: overall experience with DPP, preference in working individually or collaboratively on programming assignments, selection criteria, and satisfaction with partner, benefits and shortcomings of DPP assignments. The results are encouragingly positive and give instructors useful guidelines for the effective application of DPP.