Student misconceptions about finite state machines: identify them in order to create a concept inventory

A concept inventory (CI) is a standardized assessment tool designed to evaluate a student's understanding of the fundamental concepts of a topic. To create a CI, it is necessary to accurately identify these concepts, but also to identify how poorly students understand them. The aim of this paper is to present an approach used to identify misconceptions related to the concept of Finite State Machine (FSM). In the learning process, identifying the students' misconceptions, i.e., when they appear and how to efficiently correct them, are important aspects of the best learning outcome. Rather than measuring understanding at a specific point in the learning timeline, the CI can be administered to students several times over the course of the learning period to measure how students' understanding of concepts changes. This preliminary study is composed of two main steps. In the first step, four misconceptions were identified about FSM based on multi-year observations and teacher experiences. From these misconceptions, seven statements about FSM are specified. In the second step, a Likert scale questionnaire (composed of seven statements) was administered five times to students according to a specific schedule, allowing to measure the evolution of FSM understanding. A pre-questionnaire is used to determine the students' misconceptions about the FSM concept, based on their learning (self-learning or from previous courses). This measure, which is the starting point of this preliminary study, makes it possible to highlight the changes in the students' positioning in relation to the statements provided and to link these changes to the teaching interventions. Thus, changes are clearly observable after the two theoretical classes, and stabilization is devoted after the delivery of the lab work.