This is a student-focusing project, therefore you will be engaged actively as collaborators in the research work.

• Before the studies begin: You will be asked to complete a short survey. At this stage, you will also be paired with another student. We will hold an online meeting to kick off your first meeting with your partner. During the ice-breaking meeting, you will be free to ask questions about the research and get to know your assigned partner.
• During the studies: You will be an evaluator and co-creator. We will ask you to complete a Reflective Research Journal after each session which will detail your feedback, views, and opinions. Your journal will form part of an evidence base records for enhancement and changes. You will also be reviewing the collaborative tools used during the studies.
• At the end of studies:  We will invite you to participate in an online interview to go over your experience with using Pair Programming. The interview may take between 30 min to an hour.

Your participation in this project will be entirely online, using resources provided by us. There won’t be any travel or costs for you. You are free to withdraw from the research without penalty and without giving reasons and to request the destruction of any data that have been gathered from you, up to the point at which data are aggregated for analysis. The date set for data aggregation and analysis is 31^st of May 2022.

Pairing, Software installation and other activities involved

You will be paired with another student who has also volunteered to participate in this project and who is taking the same programming module like you. The pairing may be random or selective, e.g. based on previous programming experience, so that we can investigate whether such factors influence the pair programming work.

We will provide you with free software and where required the software licence, to pair program at a distance. You will need to have macOS or Windows on your machine and install the software. 

macOS 10.10 and later
Windows 10 (64 bits)
Windows 8.1 (64 bits)
Windows 8 (64 bits)
Windows 7 with SP1 (64 bits)

Recommended requirements

• Quad Core (4 cores) - 2GHz CPU
• 4GB memory
• GPU with at least 128MB of video memory
  
• Speakers and microphone for voice chat
  
• An Internet connection, wired or wireless (wifi, 3G/4G), of at least 3Mbps (upload and download)

We will provide online training materials explaining how Pair Programming works and how to use the software.

You and your partner will then collaboratively complete some of your module's non-assessed programming exercise, adhering to the Pair Programming methodology. It is up to you and your partner to choose which activities you want to solve. How good your solutions are will not be assessed in this study, but how you engage with your pair using the provided software tools. As such, the sessions are not tests.

Please note, TMA or EMA submissions must be completed individually.

The Pair Programming Session

You and your partner will arrange the sessions at mutually convenient dates and times. The frequency of sessions will depend on you and your pair, and the number of module exercises that can be paired upon. 

To get used to Pair Programming and your partner, we ask you to do 4 sessions. To keep momentum, we suggest one session per week. We suggest keeping each session at most 1h long. We ask you to record all your sessions, using the software provided.  We encourage you to do more than the required minimum. The more sessions you do, the better the quality of data derived from the studies.

After each session, you will need to note your thoughts on the session in your individual Reflective Research Journal which we'll provide. 

We will help organise/support the setting up of the paired sessions.

What are the likely challenges you might face while taking part in the studies?

i.   Pairing:

You will be assigned to pair program with another student who you may not know. There may be challenges on bonding, voice communication (e.g. accent), personality, time difference and individual availability etc.

ii.   Time and Session Scheduling:

While it is part of your module requirement to complete all programming activities, you will be completing it with another assigned student as part of the pair programming studies.  You will then need to spend a bit more time to complete your reflective research journal. This may take up to additional 20 mins of your time. 

iii.   Collaborative Tools

The collaborative tools are software that you will be required to download and install on your computer. While we are providing you with installation instructions, you may still have difficulties. You can email us or request for a call back if you require any form of assistance and we will provide you with all the support you may require.

What is in it for me?

Your participation will not affect your access to tutorial support or the results of your module assessments. However, recent research studies of students who have participated in Pair Programming in classrooms showed they attained better results in comparison with students who did not. If we are able to achieve and attain the same benefits as students in classrooms did from using Remote Pair Programming, your programming skills, learning experience and resulting academic results are likely to be better than students who did not participate, as you bounce ideas at each other and spot each other’s mistakes.

Pair programming is a widely used technique within the software development industry. Practising pair programming during your studies will develop your interpersonal skills and your employability, as it provides you with valuable professional skills such as discipline, consistency, collaboration and teamwork.

To show our appreciation for your participation, if you follow through the research studies, you will receive a £30 voucher after the interview at the end of the studies.

You will be part of a team that aims to improve how programming is taught and learned at the OU, exploring the use of technology in new ways and gaining a fuller understanding of changes in students’ expectations and aspirations in learning programming.

‘Remote pair programming’ and ‘teaching programming at a distance’ are trending research topics. As such this project ensures The Open University maintain its relevance as one of UK top research institutions contributing to the development of educational technology tools. The findings and tools used in this project will be disseminated externally, as they could benefit distance education in general and student collaboration outside labs in face-to-face settings.