Title :
Lab Partners: If They´re Good Enough for the Natural Sciences, Why Aren´t They Good Enough for Us?
Author :
Williams, Laurie ; Layman, Lucas
Author_Institution :
North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh
Abstract :
Despite many professed benefits of collaboration, some computer science educators feel students need to master work individually, particularly in the courses early in the curriculum that feed into software engineering courses. In the natural sciences, however, students almost always work with one or more partners in the laboratory. What can computer science educators learn about collaborative lab settings from our natural science counterparts? We conducted a survey of science and computer science educators to compare views and use of collaboration in their classes. The positive and negative aspects of collaboration, as reported by the natural science educators, are strikingly similar to those of computer science educators. These results suggest that computer science educators should be more open to the use of collaborative labs, as is done in the natural sciences, for the overall benefit to students.
Keywords :
computer science education; natural sciences computing; software engineering; collaborative lab settings; computer science educators; natural science educators; software engineering courses; Biology; Chemistry; Collaboration; Collaborative software; Collaborative work; Computer science; Laboratories; Physics; Programming profession; Software engineering;
Conference_Titel :
Software Engineering Education & Training, 2007. CSEET '07. 20th Conference on
Conference_Location :
Dublin
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-2893-7
DOI :
10.1109/CSEET.2007.31