I have seen past posts regarding pair programming and students’ inability to share and edit each other’s code. Has that changed? Can students share and edit code now?
Hi @razzaqrm ! We unfortunately don’t support live collaboration between students (and/or between teachers) on one single project or puzzle, like offered in Google Docs for example, but hope to add such updates in the future.
Pair programming on Code.org, in its current state, is designed to be used by students sharing one device and working together on one device. Paired partners won’t be able to see the “driver” student’s work until after they finish a given puzzle. If you’re a student working on one computer (entering code yourself), and you’re paired with a student working on another computer, the paired person won’t see your code written in real-time. You’ll need to finish the level yourself, and then your paired partner can go back and look to see what code you’ve written.
If you want two students (or teacher and a student) to be working on one project, and for them to use pair programming, they will need to make sure they are signing into the site at completely separate times (without overlapping), or the person who signs in after the first person will not be able to see the updates made by the first person.
Our apologies for any inconvenience on this - we appreciate your feedback!
1 Like
This is something you will want to turn off as soon as you turn it on, especially if you are worried about cheating. I do show students how they can share code with each other, by going into text mode and they can copy/paste into an email to share code. I am ok with this method because the students still need to read the code and make sure things like sprite names are called properly.
Advanced students do that when they get better with writing functions.
2 Likes
I am confused. We’re in Unit 3 Lesson 8 of CSP. It expressly directs us to use Pair Programming. Yet your answer here says it is not intended for CSP. What am I not understanding? Thanks! JR
A while back I created a project called cdo-sync (source) that would allow users to make code.org projects in VSCode. VSCode offers a large number of features, one of them is Live Share, which is basically what Google Doc’s functionality offers.
I wish I had put more polish but this was the best I could do at the time. Among other things, it allowed me to use ES6 syntax ()=>{} and/or Typescript interface A {}, then compile it to ES5. Having dark mode and typechecking was truly a blessing.
In a school environment, cdo-sync is neither easy to set up nor practical for most intents and purposes. Regardless, I thought it would be nice to share as this is what most people think of when they see “pair programming.”
Here are some links which I recorded for a Discord server:
Basic Concept
Added Gamelab Animations
Added Library Support
Added In-Vscode Preview
Sign-In System in Applab using a library I created (Nomx)
What I mean by Live Share
Hello @jranta , our apologies for any confusion here - I misspoke previously! Pair programming is definitely meant for CSP, CSD, and any other areas of the site. I’ve amended my previous message here, and have updated relevant support articles on our site to clear up this confusion. The core point we want to reiterate here, which addresses your question in the other thread at Pair programming not working?, is that pair programming on Code.org does not involve live collaboration by 2+ students on 2+ devices. We don’t support any option for “live collaboration” similar to what you’d see in a Google Docs-type environment. Pair programming is intended for 2+ students using one single device. You can read more background info here: https://support.code.org/hc/en-us/articles/115002122788-How-does-pair-programming-on-Code-org-work-. We hope this info clears things up!
Josh, okay, that makes sense. It also means that Pair programming doesn’t really exist as an automated feature in code.org. Pair programming is just something we teachers set up manually, by seating students next to each other. I suggest you get rid of the button to “enable it”, as it’s misleading. Clicking on the Pair programming button makes it seem that there’s code sharing capability, which confused me and my students.
Have you thought about making Pair programming an actual feature? Or doing some kind of integration with github? That would be cool. Thanks! jr
We appreciate your thoughtful feedback here on messaging regarding pair programming! We have indeed looked into building a “live” collaboration feature for 2+ students to work on one project - as you can imagine this is a frequent request! We have a small team here at Code.org and do our best to address top feature requests (large and small), while balancing regularly-scheduled work with new courses or related offerings. Our apologies for not having this available yet, and again, we appreciate the feedback!
1 Like