Supporting Programming Assignments with Activity Streams: An Empirical Study

Social learning theory emphasizes the importance of providing learners with opportunities to observe their peers, and to participate actively in a community. Unfortunately, early computing courses tend to emphasize individual programming assignments, which discourage learners from observing and working with their peers. In order to explore the possibility that increased opportunities for social awareness and interaction while working on programming assignments might influence learning outcomes in early computing courses, we are studying the design and use of social networking-style activity streams in such courses. In an empirical study of the use of two types of activity streams in a CS 2 course - one that was part of a learning management system, and one integrated directly into students' programming environment - we found that students who used the integrated stream were twice as socially active; however, social participation in both environments was positively correlated with students' grades. Our results suggest that the use of activity streams as an adjunct to individual programming assignments can positively influence learning; computing instructors would do well to find ways to get their students to participate actively in activity streams during the programming process.