_________________________________________________________________________________________Those science, mathematics, and engineering faculty who are serious about making the education they offer as available to their daughters as to their sons are, we posit, facing the prospect of dismantling a large part of its traditional pedagogical structure, along with the assumptions and practice which support it. [Seymour and Hewett 1997].Prior research indicates that female students can be concerned about the insularity of working alone for long periods of time, as they perceive to be the case with computer science and information technology careers. We studied an advanced undergraduate software engineering course at North Carolina State University to characterize the potential of collaborative learning environments created via pair-programming and agile software development to ameliorate this concern. A collective case study of three representative women in the course revealed that they held the following four themes in common: working with others; productivity; confidence; and interest in IT careers. Three conjectures concerning collaboration emerged from our study, including the importance of face-to-face meetings, an increased confidence among women based on product quality, and a reduction in the amount of time spent on assignments. While our findings are not generalized to early undergraduate courses, the young women we studied were at a critical junction in deciding whether to pursue a career in IT upon their near-term graduation. Additionally, we propose a model for future testing with both males and females that connects these three factors with an increased interest in IT careers.
Millennial students (those born after 1982), particularly African Americans and women, have demonstrated a propensity toward collaborative activities.We conducted a collective case study at North Carolina State University and North Carolina A&T to ascertain the role of collaboration and social interaction in attracting and retaining students in information technology. Responses from semi-structured interviews with 11 representative African American students in these classes were coded and analyzed. The responses from these minority students were used to evolve a social interaction model. The conjectures generated from the model suggest that pair programming and agile software methodologies effectively create a collaborative environment that is desirable to Millennial students, male and female, and, with the new evidence, minority and majority. Additionally, the African American Millennial students enjoy learning from their peers and believe that a collaborative environment better prepares them for the "real world."
-This paper presents the results of an initial quantitative investigation to assess a variety of factors that potentially affect the collaborative software development experience.This research was conducted with 119 students in two undergraduate software engineering classes at North Carolina State University. A survey was administered where students could reflect on their collaborative experiences. We analyzed these factors for interrelationships as well as for correlations with performance in the course, grade point average, and SAT scores. Our findings support the components of the proposed Social Interaction Model of Pair Programming.
The substantiation of the Social Interaction Model of PairProgramming values suggests that they should be considered in course planning. We also find that work ethic and self-perceived programming ability positively correlate with GPA. Our results also suggest that collaborative software development may improve student perceptions of software engineering.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.