Pair Programming in the classroom

By Shashi

The concept of pair programming (PP) has for years held much promise for collaborative and effective student work in a computing classroom. The idea behind this, for the uninitiated, is that students get into pairs and work on a single challenge. They take on the roles of driver and navigator depending on the challenge at hand and the solution is, ideally, solved faster and is expected to be of better quality. For the last few weeks I have been reading both the research and the application of PP in a K12 setting. While there is surprisingly very little that can be considered good guides (maybe more K12 CS educators should document their findings with work like this?) I think I now have a better grasp on the topic. As a CS teacher even though I have tried different versions of PP in my classes, they have resulted in varying degrees of success. 

Read More at: Compute Thought