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This paper reports on work adapting an industry standard team practice referred to as Mob Programming into a paradigm called Online Mob Programming (OMP) for the purpose of encouraging teams to reflect on concepts and share work in the midst of their project experience. We present a study situated within a series of three course projects in a large online course on Cloud Computing. In a 3x3 Latin Square design, we compare students working alone and in two OMP configurations (with and without transactivity-maximization team formation designed to enhance reflection). The analysis reveals the extent to which grading on the produced software rewards teams where highly skilled individuals dominate the work. Further, compliance with the OMP paradigm is associated with greater evidence of group reflection on concepts and greater shared practice of programming.
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Online Mob Programming: Bridging the 21st Century Workplace and the Classroom
We investigate how a collaborative software development paradigm in the workplace can be adapted for collaborative project-based learning in the classroom. The paradigm, called Mob Programming, where a group of co-located developers work on one problem concurrently, inspires Online Mob Programming which structures groups of 3-6 students collaborating online, in a platform integrated with automated support for role rotation. Results from this study comparing OMP scaffolding with self-organization in a university computer science course shows OMP scaffolds help students adopt OMP roles without a significant drop in group product quality.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1822831
- PAR ID:
- 10104106
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
- Volume:
- 2
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Purpose In response to the evolving COVID-19 pandemic, many universities have transitioned to online instruction. With learning promising to be online, at least in part, for the near future, instructors may be thinking of providing online collaborative learning opportunities to their students who are increasingly isolated from their peers because of social distancing guidelines. This paper aims to provide design recommendations for online collaborative project-based learning exercises based on this research in a software engineering course at the university level. Design/methodology/approach Through joint work between learning scientists, course instructors and software engineering practitioners, instructional design best practices of alignment between the context of the learners, the learning objectives, the task and the assessment are actualized in the design of collaborative programming projects for supporting learning. The design, first segments a short real-time collaborative exercise into tasks, each with a problem-solving phase where students participate in collaborative programming, and a reflection phase for reflecting on what they learned in the task. Within these phases, a role-assignment paradigm scaffolds collaboration by assigning groups of four students to four complementary roles that rotate after each task. Findings By aligning each task with granular learning objectives, significant pre- to post-test learning from the exercise as well as each task is observed. Originality/value The roles used in the paradigm discourage divide-and-conquer tendencies often associated with collaborative projects. By requiring students to discuss conflicting ideas to arrive at a consensus implementation, their ideas are made explicit, thus providing opportunities for clarifying misconceptions through discussion and learning from the collaboration.more » « less
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Computer science pedagogy, especially in the higher education and vocational training context, has long-favored the hands-on practice provided by programming tasks due to the belief that this leads to better performance on hands-on tasks at work. This assumption, however, has not been experimentally tested against other modes of engagement such as worked example-based reflection. While theory suggests that example-based reflection could be better for conceptual learning, the concern is that the lack of practice will leave students unable to implement the learned concepts in practice, thus leaving them unprepared for work. In this paper, therefore, we experimentally contrast programming practice with example-based reflection to observe their differential impact on conceptual learning and performance on a hands-on task in the context of a collaborative programming project. The industry paradigm of Mob Programming, adapted for use in an online and instructional context, is used to structure the collaboration. Keeping with the prevailing view held in pedagogy, we hypothesize that example-based reflection will lead to better conceptual learning but will be detrimental to hands-on task performance. Results support that reflection leads to conceptual learning. Additionally, however, reflection does not pose an impediment to hands-on task performance. We discuss possible explanations for this effect, thus providing an improved understanding of prior theory in this new computer science education context. We also discuss implications for the pedagogy of software engineering education, in light of this new evidence, that impacts student learning as well as work performance in the future.more » « less
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