On the Impact of a Collaborative Pedagogy on African American Millennial Students in Software Engineering

Abstract

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."

The benefits of pairing by ability

“…These studies present convincing evidence that students who pair program are more likely to successfully complete the course [1,8,11], have increased confidence in their solutions [2,9], are more likely to continue with computer science [9], and develop better individual programming skills [1]. Additionally, some studies have shown that pair programming is particularly beneficial for female and minority students [3,16,18], and also for students with lower SAT scores [1].…”

Things coming together

“…As for graduate attributes/professional competencies, Williams [19] found that "students overwhelmingly enjoy learning from their peers and believe that a collaborative environment better prepares them for the 'real world'. "…”

“…With regard to students' appreciation of studios (where studios are compared to lectures, etc. ), Carbone [5], Armarego [1], Hundhausen [15] [14] and Williams [19] all reported that students prefer the studio experience to the lecture/tutorial/laboratory format.…”

The Case for Pair Programming in the Computer Science Classroom

“…Additionally, some studies have suggested that pair programming is particularly effective for female and minority students [Carver et al 2007;Werner et al 2004;Williams et al 2007]. …”