TITLE:
An Empirical Study of the Optimum Team Size Requirement in a Collaborative Computer Programming/Learning Environment
AUTHORS:
Olalekan S. Akinola, Babatunde I. Ayinla
KEYWORDS:
Optimum Team Size, Collaborative Learning, Collaborative Programming, Computer Programming
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Software Engineering and Applications,
Vol.7 No.12,
November
21,
2014
ABSTRACT: Pair programming has been
widely acclaimed the best way to go in computer programming. Recently,
collaboration involving more subjects has been shown to produce better results
in programming environments. However, the optimum group size needed for the
collaboration has not been adequately addressed. This paper seeks to inculcate
and acquaint the students involved in the study with the spirit of team work in
software projects and to empirically determine the effective (optimum) team
size that may be desirable in programming/learning real life environments. Two
different experiments were organized and conducted. Parameters for determining
the optimal team size were formulated. Volunteered participants of different
genders were randomly grouped into five parallel teams of different sizes
ranging from 1 to 5 in the first experiment. Each team size was replicated six
times. The second experiment involved teams of same gender compositions (males
or females) in different sizes. The times (efforts) for problem analysis and
coding as well as compile-time errors (bugs) were recorded for each team size.
The effectiveness was finally analyzed for the teams. The study shows that
collaboration is highly beneficial to new learners of computer programming.
They easily grasp the programming concepts when the learning is done in the
company of others. The study also demonstrates that the optimum team size that
may be adopted in a collaborative learning of computer programming is four.