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A diagnosis of beginning programmers' misconceptions of BASIC programming statements

Authors:

Piraye Bayman,

Richard E. MayerAuthors Info & Claims

Communications of the ACM, Volume 26, Issue 9

Pages 677 - 679

https://doi.org/10.1145/358172.358408

Published: 01 September 1983 Publication History

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Abstract

In the process of learning a computer language, beginning programmers may develop mental models for the language. A mental model refers to the user's conception of the “invisible” information processing that occurs inside the computer between input and output. In this study, 30 undergraduate students learned BASIC through a self-paced, mastery manual and simultaneously had hands-on access to an Apple II computer. After instruction, the students were tested on their mental models for the execution of each of nine BASIC statements. The results show that beginning programmers—although able to perform adequately on mastery tests in program generation—possessed a wide range of misconceptions concerning the statements they had learned. This paper catalogs beginning programmers' conceptions of “what goes on inside the computer” for each of nine BASIC statements.

References

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Bayman, P., and Mayer, R.E. Novice users' misconceptions of BASIC programming statements. Rept. 82-1, Series in Learning and Cognition, Dept. Psychology, Univ. California, Santa Barbara, 1982.

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Marcus, J. Basic in Six Hours: A Self-lnstruction Text. Microcomputer Laboratory, Univ. California, Santa Barbara, 1980.

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Mayer, R.E. A psychology of learning BASIC. Comm. ACM 22, 11 (November 1979), 589-593.

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Cited By

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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
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A diagnosis of beginning programmers' misconceptions of BASIC programming statements

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Published In

Communications of the ACM Volume 26, Issue 9

Sept. 1983

76 pages

ISSN:0001-0782

EISSN:1557-7317

DOI:10.1145/358172

Editor:
Peter J. Denning
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA

Issue’s Table of Contents

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

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Publication History

Published: 01 September 1983

Published in CACM Volume 26, Issue 9

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3662025
Tucker MWang XSon JStigler J(2024)Prediction versus production for teaching computer programmingLearning and Instruction10.1016/j.learninstruc.2023.10187191(101871)Online publication date: Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2023.101871
Kong SLin T(2024)A mixed-methods study on the changes in teachers’ perceptions of and strategies for student-centred teaching in programming following teacher development coursesEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-024-12889-4Online publication date: 17-Jul-2024
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What Is Object-Oriented Programming?

Comparing loops misconceptions in block-based and text-based programming languages at the K-12 level

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