Investigating Remote Pair Programming In Part-Time Distance Education

Pair programming promotes immediate, informal collaboration over coding activities. The driving developer writes the code and controls the keyboard and mouse; the navigating developer checks the code as it is written by the driver; the developers swap their roles frequently. In agile development, programmers often code in pairs, in order to detect errors faster, produce higher code quality and discover better solutions.There is substantial research providing evidence of enhanced self-confidence and programming and communication skills if pair programming is used in teaching. However, the use of pair programming in higher education is mostly in co-located settings at campus-based universities. Our overall objective is to investigate how the benefits of pair programming can be brought to students learning to program online at a distance.This paper presents two initial studies looking at remote pair programming (RPP) also called distributed pair programming, in a part-time distance education setting, where students typically follow an unscheduled self-study style, have little interaction with each other, and have little time for extra activities. We investigated: whether readily available generic communication tools, instead of purpose-built academic prototypes, were sufficient for RPP; whether student pairs ‘jelled’ (learned to function well together) quickly; whether the ways in which the partners interact, or existing programming experience, affected jelling; and whether students felt positive about, and saw benefits in RPP, despite the overhead on their limited study time.In the paper, after describing particular challenges encountered, we present and discuss our findings and make recommendations for future implementation. The findings support the use of remote pair programming in teaching, with the majority of students considering it to be beneficial

A Social Network to Increase Collaboration and Coordination in Distributed Teams

Trust is one of the key factors involved in determining the success or failure of any project. However, achieving and maintaining trust in distributed projects when team members are geographically, temporally and culturally distant from each other is a considerable challenge. In this paper, we present Trusty, a tool designed to help develop trust in Virtual Teams. The tool is explained by using a schema of trustworthiness, and an indication of how the tool supports some features of these schema in order to foster the development of trust is therefore provided. Users have also evaluated the tool, and the results of this evaluation are presented here

Overview of Global Software Development

Este artículo presenta una panorámica general del estado del arte y de la práctica del Desarrollo Global de Software (DGS), analizando las principales revisiones sistemáticas de la litera- tura e identificando un conjunto de áreas de gran interés en la actualidad. El cual muestra que el DGS es un campo que empieza a alcanzar cierta madurez: cuya evolución ya no se encuentra limitada por factores críticos como las diferencias lingüísticas y culturales, sino que ésta depende más de factores como la motivación personal y las habilidades de los recursos huma- nos, y de la disponibilidad de funciones y responsabilidades bien definidas; y, al mismo tiempo, pre- senta nuevos desafíos centrados en importantes líneas de interés como: los Procesos para desarrollo y gestión, la Gestión de Proyectos DGS y los Equipos de TrabajoThis paper presents an overview of the state of the art and the practical of Global Software Development (DGS), analyzing the main systematic reviews of the literature and identifying a set of areas of great interest today. Which shows that the DGS is a field that begins to reach a certain maturity: whose evolution is no longer limited by critical factors such as language and cultural differences, but it depends more on factors such as personal motivation and skills of resources human, and the availability of clearly defi- ned roles and responsibilities; and at the same time, presents new challenges focused on important areas of interest include: Processes for development and management, DGS Project Management and Task Force

Co-ordination of enterprise skill formation: a sociological and historical narrative of professional, market and state initiatives in South Africa

This thesis analyses the sociological and historical genesis of enterprise skill formation in South Africa and its effective coordination. South Africa’s late nineteenth century development as an emerging economy contributed to the state often taking the lead and being at the forefront of efforts to ensure coordination in enterprise skill formation. But gradually, concerns shaped by issues related to labour supply motivated leaders in firms and enterprises to forge their own imprint on the coordination of enterprise skill formation. The thesis also shows how these concerns with the coordination of enterprise skill formation involved intellectuals and professionals who attempted to intervene on these matters. The thesis proceeds to elaborate the unique institutional architecture which was constructed at various junctures in the history of South Africa’s human resource and skill formation journey. Furthermore the thesis gives an insight into the coordination of enterprise skill formation which occurred in the period of apartheid induced reforms. The evidence however shows that even when regimes change and new political orders are established, it does not end the necessity for continuity in the coordination of enterprise skill formation. As is to be expected, the institutional, regulatory and instrumental content of the coordination of enterprise skill formation is more complex in the contemporary period (circa. 2017) than it was in the 1920s and 1930s. However, the goal striven toward then was for a more streamlined process which could contribute to a change and improvement in the existing practice of enterprise skill formation. Evidence shows that this has been ongoing for over a century. The thesis gives an intricate and detailed insight into the process of building a new coordinated skills development system that was intended to ensure the coordination of enterprise skill formation under a democratic post-apartheid political dispensation. In this period a levy-grant system underwritten by a national skills levy has been a central instrument of direct coordination into enterprise skill formation. The analysis that is provided traces the iterative steps that were treaded by policy makers and policy thinkers from at least the early 1920s as they confronted what may have appeared as an elusive enterprise skill formation process. This analysis is done with a great deal more depth for the period since the early 1990s