We are pleased to welcome you to our research portal on an exciting pilot study on implementing Pair Programming for students learning Programming online.  

In many face-to-face universities around the world, students program in pairs in their computer labs. In industry, professional developers sometimes code in pairs, in order to spot errors more quickly and find better solutions, because ‘two heads are better than one’. 

Previous educational research from the UK, Europe, and the USA indicates that pair programming can lead to improved quality of the code, enhanced programming skills, and increased self-confidence when programming.

Despite these proven academic benefits of using Pair Programming in teaching, it is mostly available to students learning to program on campus and these students therefore already have an employability skill advantage over students learning online.

The OU’s Centre for STEM pedagogy, eSTEeM is funding this research and we will be investigating whether OU students can also benefit from pair programming and how best to achieve it online.  

Who are the people behind this project?