Assigning student programming pairs based on their mental model consistency: An initial investigation

Pair Programming has been shown to be beneficial to student learning. Much research has been conducted to effectively create student pairs when using pair programming in introductory computer science courses. This paper reports results of research investigating the effectiveness of pairing students based on their mental model consistency. Prior research has found a strong correlation between mental model consistency and performance in introductory computer programming courses. Evaluating students' mental models helps to provide insights into how students approach problem solving and may indicate how to effectively pair students to improve their programming ability and learning. The results from an empirical study conducted to investigate these effects indicate that mental model consistency is a predictor of student success in an introductory programming course. Future goals of this research are to fully evaluate all possible pairing arrangements and to produce tests that can be used to evaluate mental model consistency for other computer science concepts.