ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that learning remotely is a crucial skill for K-12 students. However, remote instruction and collaboration bring a new set of challenges for these students, especially in the context of pair programming. An important goal for the CS education community is to understand these younger learners' experiences during remote programming activities. This experience report describes a three-day learning experience in which 18 middle school students engaged in remote pair programming activities by modeling scientific processes in a block-based programming language. After three remote pair programming sessions, we conducted individual interviews to understand middle school students' experiences during remote pair programming activities as well as comparing these new experiences to their previous co-located pair programming experiences. The results from these interviews suggest that the majority of the students (72%) enjoyed the remote activities despite many (55%) experiencing some form of technical difficulty. The interviews revealed important opportunities and challenges that being remote brought to pair programming within themes of changes in communication and focus, pair programming dynamics, and available resources. Students also identified issues with remote collaboration such as technical difficulties from software that impaired their ability to work and to communicate. These observations inform new efforts to adapt CS education to the increased demand for remote collaborative work and reveal patterns that may increase success in this new work style. © 2022 ACM.