Knowledge Sharing through Pair Programming in Learning Environments: An Empirical Study

Agile software development is an iterative and incremental methodology, where solutions evolve from self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Pair programming is a type of agile software development technique where two programmers work together with one computer for developing software. This paper reports the results of the pair programming exercise which was carried out among fifty six post graduate students of Master of Computer Applications (MCA) who are engaged in developing small applications as a part of their Visual Programming laboratory course at Kumaraguru College of Technology (KCT) during the academic year 2012-2013. The basic intent of the study is to explore the possibilities of adopting pair programming as a pedagogical tool in higher educational setting. The study investigates the possibilities of deploying purposeful pair programming modules to facilitate knowledge sharing in regular laboratory sessions. The research findings suggest that pair programming can be a useful approach to teach computer programming in higher education to facilitate effective knowledge sharing among the students.