Investigating the effects of personality traits on pair programming in a higher education setting through a family of experiments

Salleh, Norsaremah and Mendes, Emilia and Grundy, John (2012) Investigating the effects of personality traits on pair programming in a higher education setting through a family of experiments. Empirical Software Engineering, 19 (3). pp. 714-752. ISSN 1382-3256

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Abstract

Evidence from our systematic literature review revealed numerous inconsistencies in findings from the Pair Programming (PP) literature regarding the effects of personality on PP’s effectiveness as a pedagogical tool. In particular: i) the effect of differing personality traits of pairs on the successful implementation of pair-programming (PP) within a higher education setting is still unclear, and ii) the personality instrument most often used had been Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), despite being an indicator criticized by personality psychologists as unreliable in measuring an individual’s personality traits. These issues motivated the research described in this paper. We conducted a series of five formal experiments (one of which was a replicated experiment), between 2009 and 2010, at the University of Auckland, to investigate the effects of personality composition on PP’s effectiveness. Each experiment looked at a particular personality trait of the Five-Factor personality framework. This framework comprises five broad traits (Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism), and our experiments focused on three of these - Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. A total of 594 undergraduate students participated as subjects. Overall, our findings for all five experiments, including the replication, showed that Conscientiousness and Neuroticism did not present a statistically significant effect upon paired students’ academic performance. However, Openness played a significant role in differentiating paired students’ academic performance. Participants’ survey results also indicated that PP not only caused an increase in satisfaction and confidence levels but also brought enjoyment to the tutorial classes and enhanced students’ motivation.

Item Type:	Article (Journal)
Additional Information:	3705/28674
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Pair programming ; Formal experiment ; Personality traits ; Five-factor model ; Higher education
Subjects:	Q Science > Q Science (General)
Kulliyyahs/Centres/Divisions/Institutes (Can select more than one option. Press CONTROL button):	Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology > Department of Computer Science Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology > Department of Computer Science
Depositing User:	Dr Norsaremah Salleh
Date Deposited:	31 Jan 2013 14:43
Last Modified:	20 Sep 2017 16:45
URI:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/id/eprint/28674

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