research-article

Identifying student misconceptions of programming

Authors:

Lisa C. Kaczmarczyk,

Elizabeth R. Petrick,

J. Philip East,

Geoffrey L. HermanAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '10: Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

Pages 107 - 111

https://doi.org/10.1145/1734263.1734299

Published: 10 March 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Computing educators are often baffled by the misconceptions that their CS1 students hold. We need to understand these misconceptions more clearly in order to help students form correct conceptions. This paper describes one stage in the development of a concept inventory for Computing Fundamentals: investigation of student misconceptions in a series of core CS1 topics previously identified as both important and difficult. Formal interviews with students revealed four distinct themes, each containing many interesting misconceptions. Three of those misconceptions are detailed in this paper: two misconceptions about memory models, and data assignment when primitives are declared. Individual misconceptions are related, but vary widely, thus providing excellent material to use in the development of the CI. In addition, CS1 instructors are provided immediate usable material for helping their students understand some difficult introductory concepts.

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Cited By

Zhang ATang XOney SChen YJoyner DKim MWang XXia M(2024)CFlow: Supporting Semantic Flow Analysis of Students' Code in Programming Problems at ScaleProceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3657604.3662025(188-199)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3662025
Fwa HRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey MGama KSiegmund J(2024)Experience Report: Identifying common misconceptions and errors of novice programmers with ChatGPTProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3639474.3640059(233-241)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639474.3640059
Ali MRao PMai YXie B(2024)Using Benchmarking Infrastructure to Evaluate LLM Performance on CS Concept Inventories: Challenges, Opportunities, and CritiquesProceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3632620.3671097(452-468)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632620.3671097
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Index Terms

Identifying student misconceptions of programming
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCSE '10: Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

March 2010

618 pages

ISBN:9781450300063

DOI:10.1145/1734263

General Chairs:
Gary Lewandowski
Xavier University
,
Steven Wolfman
University of British Columbia
,
Program Chairs:
Thomas J. Cortina
Carnegie Mellon University
,
Ellen L. Walker
Hiram College

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

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Published: 10 March 2010

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3662025
Fwa HRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey MGama KSiegmund J(2024)Experience Report: Identifying common misconceptions and errors of novice programmers with ChatGPTProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3639474.3640059(233-241)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639474.3640059
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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632620.3671097
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