Work in progress-unexpected student outcome from collaborative agile software development practices and paired programming in a software engineering course

There has been low representation of women in computer science. This paper describes the initial findings of a three-year research project about women in the field of information technology. The goal of this research is to examine the effect of pair programming and agile software development on students. During the first semester of this project, pair programming was used in a junior/senior software engineering class at North Carolina State University. In this paper, we share the grounded theory analysis of three interviews and thirteen project retrospective essays of the female students. Theoretical models were developed to describe: (a) the factors of students´ enjoyment in a software design course that employs agile software methods, (b) context that influenced students´ study habits, and (c) the effectiveness of pair programming and agile methods. Initial findings indicate that pair programming is an effective practice for the female students, but it also brings new challenges for the instructors.