Online Mob Programming: Effective Collaborative Project-Based Learning

This lightning talk presents an ongoing effort investigating the use of a collaborative programming paradigm originating in industry called Mob Programming, for effective collaborative learning in the classroom. In industry, Mob Programming involves the participation of a group of developers solving one problem at the same time and place. Developers take turns cycling through a structured process for collaboration having been assigned pre-defined roles responsible for brainstorming ideas, deciding on a path forward and implementing the consensus decision respectively. Pedagogically, there are several compelling reasons to motivate the adoption of Mob Programming in learning settings . First, the collaboration is well-structured meaning that the interaction between even a large group of students will not descend into chaos. Second, students are assigned to roles, which allows for the differentiation of responsibilities and development of skills in different aspects of solving the problem. Third, the rotation of assigned roles allows students to learn and exhibit multiple competencies as well as appreciate bringing different perspectives to bear on solving the problem. In order to investigate whether this promise is borne out in practice, the paradigm is currently being investigated in the context of a Cloud Computing course offered online to undergraduate and graduate students at a large American university and its satellite campuses. Since this effort is still underway, faculty who implement or are interested in implementing collaborative learning for this classrooms are invited to attend and provide feedback or consider joining the effort to investigate this paradigm for use in learning settings.