...Pair programming is fine and works best when both are of equal ability.
* students with the top two grades are partners, next two, next two, and so on
* Highest grade gets to pick partner from the class. Next highest
grade that is not already on a team gets to pick partner from the
class. Kind of like picking teams for team dodgeball, but with smaller
teams)
I wonder if letting the students pair up for themselves could work? That would more or less be a variant of the second alternative above. Or does this introduce the risk of weaker students pairing up with strong students doing less work? Even learning less?
...I remember a few counterexamples from my own experience. In most of these cases the (or three) programmers of heterogenous ability had a good personal relationship going into the project. In one case, the weaker programmer had a support role designing and implementing the procedure that would draw static graphics to the screen, while the stronger programmer wrote the logic etc.; in another case, the programmers had romantic ties that I exploited. For the lovebirds, I told them ahead of time that the weaker programmer (the boy) would have to be able to walk me through the code when they were done, and he was in fact able to do so.
Sounds just great! Using heterogenous groups would most certainly be an interesting experience from the teacher's point of view. To examine how the pairs distribute the work, who takes lead and so on. However, this might be outside of the scope of my research :)
/Linda
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