Deliverable 5

The major work for this deliverable was actually the brainstorming session between Dr. Sprenkle and I. I already had some ideas about how I wanted the IDE to work, but vocalizing those as well hearing Dr. Sprenkle's ideas made it all come together. I think it really is true that collaborating and communicating not only improves learning, but improves understanding. Hopefully, this will play out in the IDE as well.

This week really made it all come together to see the big picture. It was actually amazing to see how quickly we conceptualized the IDE. The background research really paid off. Hopefully, I can convey my background research in my references section, but I still feel as though I am lacking. I have the information, I think I am just struggling on when to cite it.

Although I did not need to go back to the ACM Digital Library for this deliverable, I went back and searched for relevant articles on pair programming in order to prepare for next week. I came back with another great study that involved videotaping pairs while programming and again showed that the navigator/driver model is in question. What is most exciting to me is that all of these studies have come out within the last year meaning that this research is more likely to be novel. I also found other articles (including the one from Dickinson) showing how pair programming benefits students, but interestingly I still could not find any that criticized the approach. Our had the words “limitations” or “problems” in their text.

For next week I will turn-in a completed draft for my project. Like I said before, the big picture is in view so this task does not seem so daunting. I still need to fill out my references and make sure I cite them in the relevant places. I also want to find at least a couple of articles describing how collaboration in general is beneficial and possibly a couple of articles discussing the benefits of commenting code. I think these will both be good support for my argument. Obviously, I need editing my previous deliverable is essential for deliverable 6. Again, I think it should be smooth sailing from here on out!

A note on latex: For lists use: \begin{enumerate} \item “TEXT” … \item “TEXT” \end{enumerate}