Have Students Work Together on Coding Projects and Teach Pair Programming
Just with StudioWeb’s HTML, CSS and JavaScript Beginners courses, you have 40 projects/assignments you can handout. They can be used as team projects and for individual students as well.
Pair Programming – a real-world style of coding
Let me first quote Wikipedia:
Pair programming (sometimes referred to as peer programming) is an agile software development technique in which two programmers work as a pair together on one workstation. One, the driver, writes code while the other, the observer, pointer or navigator, reviews each line of code as it is typed in.
In professional coding/programming, pair coding is a common practice whereby two coders work on the same page of code at the same time. One coder takes the lead, while the other kind of acts like a supervisor, checking for errors and suggesting ways of doing things. The roles switch as they like.
What industry has found, is that the resulting code is oftentimes better, and coders working together are more productive, overall.
How your students will benefit from pair programming
Once students have completed a StudioWeb chapter (videos, code challenges and quiz questions), you can pair them up to work on the projects. Not only will they learn how to work together, they will get a taste of how coding is in the real world.
Some suggestions:
- Have stronger students pair up with students who may need some help. Use Studioweb’s auto generated chapter grades to determine who is who.
- Have students switch pair programming roles, allowing students to experience both perspectives.
- Emphasize to students that this is a way that coding is actually done at a professional level.
Final comments
StudioWeb’s projects (student handouts and completed project files) are bound to course chapters and lessons, this makes it easy for teachers to manage the whole process. In fact, many teachers are able to take on the role of classroom facilitator, as the students work together to produce real web pages and websites.
Pair programming can be extremely productive in the classroom, just as it is in the workplace.
Hope that helps,
Stefan Mischook
Studioweb.com