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Searching for Barriers to Learning Iteration and Runtime in Computer Science

Published: 09 November 2015 Publication History

Abstract

The knowledge about misconceptions of programming beginners can help the instructors to improve their lessons and exercises and to eliminate barriers to learning. However, there is not much research about learning barriers, like misconceptions, in computer science education. This paper explains the goals and first results of our survey in this area. We interviewed 60 students in a pretest and 110 students in a test [8] to observe whether misconceptions about iterations and runtime are following underlying intuitive rules. Our results are verifying an underlying rule and unveiling two new misconceptions, which -- to the best of the authors' knowledge - have not been mentioned in literature yet. The results could help teachers to prevent learners' misconceptions.

References

[1]
Danielsiek, H., Paul, W., Vahrenhold, J. 2012. Detecting and understanding students' misconceptions related to algorithms and data structures. In Proc. 43rd SIGSCE Comp. Sci. Ed., pp. 21--26.
[2]
Fleury, A. E. 2000. Programming in Java: Student-constructed rules. SIGCSE Bulletin, 32(1), 197--201.
[3]
Gal-Ezer, J., Zur, E. 2003. The efficiency of algorithms--misconceptions. Computers & Education, 42(3), 215--226.
[4]
Holland, S., Griffiths, R., Woodman, M. 1997. Avoiding Object Misconceptions. SIGCSE Bulletin, 29(1), 131--134.
[5]
Mayring, P. 2000. Qualitative Content Analysis, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung, 1 (2), Art. 20.
[6]
Mayring, P. Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse: Grundlagen und Techniken 2008, Beltz, 2008.
[7]
Ragonis, N., Ben-Ari, M., 2005. A long-term investigation of the comprehension of OOP concepts by novices. Computer Science Education, 15(3), 203--221. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08993400500224310
[8]
Schiek, D. 2014. The Written Interview in Qualitative Social Research. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 43(5), 379--395.
[9]
Stavy, R., Tirosh, D. 1996. Intuitive rules in science and mathematics: the case of `more of A-more of B'. International Journal of Science Education, 18(6), 653--6.

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WiPSCE '15: Proceedings of the Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education
November 2015
149 pages
ISBN:9781450337533
DOI:10.1145/2818314
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 09 November 2015

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Author Tags

  1. Alternative Conceptions
  2. Intuitive Rule
  3. Iterations
  4. Misconceptions
  5. Runtime

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  • Short-paper
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

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WiPSCE '15

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Overall Acceptance Rate 104 of 279 submissions, 37%

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  • (2020)High-school students' mastery of basic flow-control constructs through the lens of reversibilityProceedings of the 15th Workshop on Primary and Secondary Computing Education10.1145/3421590.3421603(1-10)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2020
  • (2019)Schools (K–12)The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555.019(547-583)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
  • (2019)The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
  • (2018)Talking at cross purposesProceedings of the 13th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education10.1145/3265757.3265769(1-4)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2018
  • (2017)Qualitative Content Analysis of Programming ErrorsProceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information and Education Technology10.1145/3029387.3029399(161-166)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2017
  • (2017)Teaching sequence diagrams to programming beginners: And the change of algorithmic conceptions2017 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)10.1109/EDUCON.2017.7942863(307-310)Online publication date: Apr-2017
  • (2016)Towards Deriving Programming Competencies from Student Errors2016 International Conference on Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering (LaTICE)10.1109/LaTiCE.2016.6(19-23)Online publication date: Mar-2016

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