But, isn´t that cheating? [collaborative programming]

Can university computer science students benefit from collaborative programming? The author discusses his experiences with a class he taught at the University of Utah which set out to study pair programming in an educational setting. The class, an Active Server Pages (ASP) web programming class, consisted of 20 juniors and seniors. The students were very familiar with programming, but not with the web programming languages learned and used in the class. Each student was paired with another student to work with for the entire semester. Tests were, however, taken individually. They understood that the idea was not to break the class project into two pieces and integrate later. The idea was to work together (almost) all the time on one product. These requirements were stated in the course announcement and were re-stated at the start of the class. Most skeptically, but enthusiastically, embarked on making the transition from solo to collaborative programming. The consensus of the class was very, very positive about the technique. Making the transition to pair programming involves breaking down some personal barriers beginning with the understanding that talking is not cheating. Pair programming has the potential of changing how programming classes are taught in order to benefit the students´ learning experience.