Exploring the Benefits and Barriers of Using Computational Notebooks for Collaborative Programming Assignments

TY - GEN

T1 - Exploring the Benefits and Barriers of Using Computational Notebooks for Collaborative Programming Assignments

AU - Borowski, Marcel

AU - Zagermann, Johannes

AU - Klokmose, Clemens Nylandsted

AU - Reiterer, Harald

AU - Rädle, Roman

N1 - Conference code: 51

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - Programming assignments in computer science courses are often processed in pairs or groups of students. While working together, students face several shortcomings in today's software: The lack of real-time collaboration capabilities, the setup time of the development environment, and the use of different devices or operating systems can hamper students when working together on assignments. Text processing platforms like Google Docs solve these problems for the writing process of prose text, and computational notebooks like Google Colaboratory for data analysis tasks. However, none of these platforms allows users to implement interactive applications. We deployed a web-based literate programming system for three months during an introductory course on application development to explore how collaborative programming practices unfold and how the structure of computational notebooks affect the development. During the course, pairs of students solved weekly programming assignments. We analyzed data from weekly questionnaires, three focus groups with students and teaching assistants, and keystroke-level log data to facilitate the understanding of the subtleties of collaborative programming with computational notebooks. Findings reveal that there are distinct collaboration patterns; the preferred collaboration pattern varied between pairs and even varied within pairs over the course of three months. Recognizing these distinct collaboration patterns can help to design future computational notebooks for collaborative programming assignments.

AB - Programming assignments in computer science courses are often processed in pairs or groups of students. While working together, students face several shortcomings in today's software: The lack of real-time collaboration capabilities, the setup time of the development environment, and the use of different devices or operating systems can hamper students when working together on assignments. Text processing platforms like Google Docs solve these problems for the writing process of prose text, and computational notebooks like Google Colaboratory for data analysis tasks. However, none of these platforms allows users to implement interactive applications. We deployed a web-based literate programming system for three months during an introductory course on application development to explore how collaborative programming practices unfold and how the structure of computational notebooks affect the development. During the course, pairs of students solved weekly programming assignments. We analyzed data from weekly questionnaires, three focus groups with students and teaching assistants, and keystroke-level log data to facilitate the understanding of the subtleties of collaborative programming with computational notebooks. Findings reveal that there are distinct collaboration patterns; the preferred collaboration pattern varied between pairs and even varied within pairs over the course of three months. Recognizing these distinct collaboration patterns can help to design future computational notebooks for collaborative programming assignments.

KW - computational notebooks

KW - collaborative programming

KW - application development

KW - programming assignments

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85081616379&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/3328778.3366887

DO - 10.1145/3328778.3366887

M3 - Article in proceedings

SP - 468

EP - 474

BT - SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

PB - Association for Computing Machinery

CY - New York

T2 - The 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Y2 - 11 March 2020 through 14 March 2020

ER -