Designing Lectures as a Team and Teaching in Pairs

Abstract

[EN] A technique that is frequently used in modern software development is the so-called pair programming. The proven idea behind this technique is that innovative work in a highly complex environment can benefit from the synergy between two persons working together with well-defined roles. The transfer of this technique as a metaphor for teaching has repeatedly been reported as a successful teaching strategy called pair teaching. In this paper, we describe our experiences with designing and teaching a complete lecture on software development as a pair. Our contribution is the definition of patterns for role-assignments to both persons. These include patterns for the design of the lecture as well as patterns for the teaching in class itself. Our experience shows that there also exists a couple of anti-patterns namely role distributions that should be avoided. First evaluation results are promising in the sense that the reception of structure and content as well as students' satisfaction increased significantly with the introduction of pair design and pair teaching.