Explain Trace: Misconceptions of Control-Flow Statements
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. In all of the following cases, the second reference should be deleted:
Line 179 makes reference to the authors Albrecht and Grabowski twice.
Line 189 mentions the authors Swidan et al twice.
Line 190 refers to the author Sorva twice.
Line 202 makes reference to the authors Sekiya and Yamaguchi twice.
Line 206 mentions the authors Sirkiä and Sorva twice.
2. On page 5, the placement of Table1 is incorrect; it should be placed immediately after where it's mentioned.
3. Line 213 lacks the figure number; it says Figure ??. Please correct it.
4. In line 223, the reference to the image is presented differently as Fig. 2, while in line 238, it's referred to as Figure 2. Please follow the same format as specified by the journal's guidelines.
5. In line 223, there's a reference to Fig.2. Fig.2 should be placed after line 223, not before.
6. Lines 272-273 state, "The remaining 180 responses with misconceptions (1.7% of all responses collected) were agreed to contain a misconception by all three researchers." Was it 3 or 2 researchers since in line 274 it mentions, "The two researchers' agreement…"?
7. Lines 284-285 state, "We excluded the misconceptions that were expressed only by one student and weren't mentioned in previous research." However, in Table A1, SEQ3 & RECsl were expressed by 1 student. Please clarify.
8. Line 352 states, "The most frequent misconceptions were as follows" and presents 11 Misconceptions. Later, in line 369, it's stated, "... and 11 were not found by us in the previous literature." Are these 11 Misconceptions presented in lines 363-365 as the most frequent the ones that previous research didn't identify? This should be clarified.
9. The phrasing of Misconception 1 is slightly different from SEL4 in Table A1. It should be formulated in the same way in both cases.
10. In the Conclusion, they should highlight and explain whether the 11 Misconceptions they identified address a research gap and how significant and useful they are for programming educators. As the contribution of the study consists of these 11 additional misconceptions that were not identified in previous research, how can this be explained? For example, was the research conducted with a different target group or on a different subject? Were the other studies conducted with a corresponding age group? And in a corresponding field (CS1)?
11. The authors should add a section about the limitations and threads of validity of their research.
Author Response
First of all, we want to thank the reviewer for careful and constructive consideration of our manuscript.
Our replies are shown in green color for your convenience. All significant changes in the text are in yellow background.
- In all of the following cases, the second reference should be deleted:
Line 179 makes reference to the authors Albrecht and Grabowski twice.
Line 189 mentions the authors Swidan et al twice.
Line 190 refers to the author Sorva twice.
Line 202 makes reference to the authors Sekiya and Yamaguchi twice.
Line 206 mentions the authors Sirkiä and Sorva twice.
Thank you for finding that. We fixed the wrong citation command that doubled authors during references.
- On page 5, the placement of Table1 is incorrect; Someone should place immediately it after where it's mentioned.
This is the result of MDPI LaTeX template, which sometimes puts tables and figures at the top of the pages they are in even if they are placed in the text after they are mentioned.
We moved the table and figures to the next pages. Unfortunately, even when placed back at the end of the relevant section, the table appears at the top.
3. Line 213 lacks the figure number; it says Figure ??. Please correct it.
Thank you for catching this, we added the missing figure (see page 5).
4. In line 223, the reference to the image is presented differently as Fig. 2, while in line 238, it's referred to as Figure 2. Please follow the same format as specified by the journal's guidelines
5. In line 223, there's a reference to Fig.2. Fig.2 should be placed after line 223, not before.
We changed all the references to "Figure" (see lines 218-221)
6. Lines 272-273 state, "The remaining 180 responses with misconceptions (1.7% of all responses collected) were agreed to contain a misconception by all three researchers." Was it 3 or 2 researchers since in line 274 it mentions, "The two researchers' agreement…"?
Thank you for catching this, it is changed to "by both of the researchers".
7. Lines 284-285 state, "We excluded the misconceptions that were expressed only by one student and weren't mentioned in previous research." However, in Table A1, SEQ3 & RECsl were expressed by 1 student. Please clarify.
We meant that the misconceptions which satisfied both conditions (expressed only by 1 student and not mentioned in previous research) were excluded. The misconceptions simlar to SEQ3 and RECsl were found in previous literature as discussed in lines 315-328.
To clarify the sentence, we changed it to "We excluded the misconceptions that were expressed only by one student if they weren't mentioned in previous literature."
8. Line 352 states, "The most frequent misconceptions were as follows" and presents 11 Misconceptions. Later, in line 369, it's stated, "... and 11 were not found by us in the previous literature." Are these 11 Misconceptions presented in lines 363-365 as the most frequent the ones that previous research didn't identify? This should be clarified.
No, these two lists of 11 misconceptions are different: most of the common misconceptions were found in the previous research, of course. These numbers are in different paragraphs answering different research questions. We added the specific list of 11 new misconceptions to increase the clarity and avoid confusion.
9. The phrasing of Misconception 1 is slightly different from SEL4 in Table A1. It should be formulated in the same way in both cases.
We verified the phrasing and made it consistent across the manuscript.
10. In the Conclusion, they should highlight and explain whether the 11 Misconceptions they identified address a research gap and how significant and useful they are for programming educators. As the contribution of the study consists of these 11 additional misconceptions that were not identified in previous research, how can this be explained? For example, was the research conducted with a different target group or on a different subject? Were the other studies conducted with a corresponding age group? And in a corresponding field (CS1)?
We expanded the conclusion (see lines 426-443) to explain the difference between our research and previous literature and discussed these questions. We think that we were able to find 11 new misconceptions not because of the sample, which was rather generic for such studies, but because of our method, which allowed us to analyze a relatively big sample of students' free-text answers and because of narrower focus on misconceptions of control flow statements.
11. The authors should add a section about the limitations and threads of validity of their research.
We added the section on threats to validity (see line 409-424)
Reviewer 2 Report
Control flow statements cause misunderstandings among computer science students studying introductory computer programming courses. In this manuscript, the authors studied these misconceptions by collecting and processing 10,799 answers from 67 students. The manuscript contains valuable information about teaching computer programming, and the results are promising.
Please consider the following comments.
1. Line 77: “Albrecht and Grabowski report “order of conditions” but ignore the possibility of skipping conditions Albrecht and Grabowski [15].” No need to repeat the authors’ names again. Please correct to:
“Albrecht and Grabowski report “order of conditions” but ignore the possibility of skipping conditions [15].”
2. Line 131: “In particular, Kaczmarczyk et al Kaczmarczyk et al. [12] conducted interviews…”
No need to repeat the authors' names two times.
3. Line 175: “Kaczmarczyk et al Kaczmarczyk et al. [12] identified …”
No need to repeat the authors’ names two times.
4. Line 179: “Albrecht and Grabowski Albrecht and Grabowski [15] identified…”
No need to repeat the authors’ names two times.
5. Line 189: “Swidan et al Swidan et al. [13] studied …”
No need to repeat the authors’ names two times.
6. 206: “Sirkiä and Sorva Sirkiä and Sorva [14] identified …”
No need to repeat the authors’ names two times!
7. Line 213: “The scheme of our study is shown in Figure ??”
The figure number is not given (only two question mark symbols)! Also, I searched the entire manuscript, and I could not find any figure related to “the scheme of the study.” Please add the figure and explain it in detail.
8. Line 259: “The resulting list contained 16 misconceptions about selection, 12 about loops, and 9”
There is missing text here (and 9 about what?!). Please correct this.
9. Figures 1 and 2 show examples of the questions. Please talk more about the pseudocode algorithms used in this study. For example, the algorithm in Fig. 2 is not clear.
There is “while red wait”; it is not clear how to get out of this loop (infinite loop). If red is true, then wait until what? There is no statement that changes the colour to something different than red, so we get out of the loop? What is the meaning of the “go” in this algorithm? Also, is wait_seconds(3) inside or outside the while structure? (there are no curly brackets after “while” to clarify the scope of the while structure.
The algorithms are written in a non-standard format. Please add more explanations.
10. In Table A1, LOO3: Why do you refer to the C++ programming language? We understand from the manuscript that the study has considered algorithms written in pseudocode (not a programming language).
11. Identifying the misconceptions is an important step toward improving teaching methods for introductory programming courses. However, while reading this manuscript, I was expecting more feedback on how to deal with the identified misconceptions. Most readers of this study are expected to be instructors of programming courses, and what matters to them the most (after realizing the misconceptions) is how to address them while teaching so future students can understand computer programming better. Please add your feedback (from your points of view as experts in this field) on the best methods to overcome these misconceptions. This would increase the interest in this paper and improve its quality. Thank you.
Moderate editing of the English language is required.
Author Response
Thank you for careful and constructive review of our manuscript.
Our replies to your comments are in green font for your convenience; the significant changes in the manuscript are shown in yellow background.
- Line 77: “Albrecht and Grabowski report “order of conditions” but ignore the possibility of skipping conditions Albrecht and Grabowski [15].” No need to repeat the authors’ names again. Please correct to:
“Albrecht and Grabowski report “order of conditions” but ignore the possibility of skipping conditions [15].”
- Line 131: “In particular, Kaczmarczyk et al Kaczmarczyk et al. [12] conducted interviews…”
No need to repeat the authors' names two times.
- Line175: “Kaczmarczyk et al Kaczmarczyk et al. [12] identified …”
No need to repeat the authors’ names two times.
- Line 179: “Albrecht and Grabowski Albrecht and Grabowski [15] identified…”
No need to repeat the authors’ names two times.
- Line 189: “Swidan et al Swidan et al. [13] studied …”
No need to repeat the authors’ names two times.
- 206: “Sirkiä and Sorva Sirkiä and Sorva [14] identified …”
No need to repeat the authors’ names two times!
Thank you for catching this, we changed the erroneous citing command that repeated authors' names in cases 1-6 .
- Line 213: “The scheme of our study is shown in Figure ??”
The figure number is not given (only two question mark symbols)! Also, I searched the entire manuscript, and I could not find any figure related to “the scheme of the study.” Please add the figure and explain it in detail.
We added the missing figure (it's now figure 1). The explanations are in section 3.2 (pages 7-8)
- Line 259: “The resulting list contained 16 misconceptions about selection, 12 about loops, and 9”
There is missing text here (and 9 about what?!). Please correct this.
Thank you for catching this, we restored the accidentally removed the end of the sentence (see line 272).
- Figures 1 and 2 show examples of the questions. Please talk more about the pseudocode algorithms used in this study. For example, the algorithm in Fig. 2 is not clear.
There is “while red wait”; it is not clear how to get out of this loop (infinite loop). If red is true, then wait until what? There is no statement that changes the colour to something different than red, so we get out of the loop? What is the meaning of the “go” in this algorithm? Also, is wait_seconds(3) inside or outside the while structure? (there are no curly brackets after “while” to clarify the scope of the while structure.
The algorithms are written in a non-standard format. Please add more explanations.
We added explanations about the notation of questions (see lines 230-250)
- In Table A1, LOO3: Why do you refer to the C++ programming language? We understand from the manuscript that the study has considered algorithms written in pseudocode (not a programming language).
Thank you for catching this, we changed it to a more general definition.
- Identifying the misconceptions is an important step toward improving teaching methods for introductory programming courses. However, while reading this manuscript, I was expecting more feedback on how to deal with the identified misconceptions. Most readers of this study are expected to be instructors of programming courses, and what matters to them the most (after realizing the misconceptions) is how to address them while teaching so future students can understand computer programming better. Please add your feedback (from your points of view as experts in this field) on the best methods to overcome these misconceptions. This would increase the interest in this paper and improve its quality. Thank you.
We enhanced the Conclusions section according to your suggestions (see lines 446-464).
Thank you again for helping to improve our article.
P.S. The review also indicated moderate English editing without quoting particular problems. We sent the manuscript to an English editing service and accepted their corrections.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have addressed the comments appropriately. Thank you.
Minor editing of the English language is required.