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Searching for Barriers to Learning Iteration and Runtime in Computer Science

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Published:09 November 2015Publication 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

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM Other conferences
        WiPSCE '15: Proceedings of the Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education
        November 2015
        149 pages
        ISBN:9781450337533
        DOI:10.1145/2818314

        Copyright © 2015 ACM

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 9 November 2015

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        • short-paper
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        Overall Acceptance Rate104of279submissions,37%

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