A diagnosis of beginning programmers' misconceptions of BASIC programming statements

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A diagnosis of beginning programmers' misconceptions of BASIC programming statements

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Communications of the ACM archive
Volume 26 , Issue 9 (September 1983) table of contents

Pages: 677 - 679

Year of Publication: 1983

ISSN:0001-0782

Authors

Piraye Bayman	Univ. of California, Santa Barbara
Richard E. Mayer	Univ. of California, Santa Barbara

Publisher

ACM New York, NY, USA

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Downloads (6 Weeks): 6, Downloads (12 Months): 62, Citation Count: 16

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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

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

	1	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.
	2	Marcus, J. Basic in Six Hours: A Self-lnstruction Text. Microcomputer Laboratory, Univ. California, Santa Barbara, 1980.
	3	Richard E. Mayer, A psychology of learning BASIC, Communications of the ACM, v.22 n.11, p.589-593, Nov. 1979 [doi>10.1145/359168.359171]
	4	Richard E. Mayer, The Psychology of How Novices Learn Computer Programming, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.13 n.1, p.121-141, March 1981 [doi>10.1145/356835.356841]
	5	Richard E. Mayer , Piraye Bayman, Psychology of calculator languages: a framework for describing differences in users' knowledge, Communications of the ACM, v.24 n.8, p.511-520, Aug. 1981 [doi>10.1145/358722.358735]
	6	Thomas P. Moran, Guest Editor's Introduction: An Applied Psychology of the User, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.13 n.1, p.1-11, March 1981 [doi>10.1145/356835.356836]

CITED BY 16

	J. C. Spohrer , E. Soloway, Alternatives to construct-based programming misconceptions, ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, v.17 n.4, p.183-191, April 1986
	William G. Bulgren , Rose M. Marra , Gregory F. Wetzel, An introductory algorithm teacher, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.19 n.1, p.292-296, Feb. 1987
	Richard E. Mayer , Jennifer L. Dyck , William Vilberg, Learning to program and learning to think: what's the connection?, Communications of the ACM, v.29 n.7, p.605-610, July 1986
	James C. Spohrer , Elliot Soloway, Novice mistakes: are the folk wisdoms correct?, Communications of the ACM, v.29 n.7, p.624-632, July 1986
	Jennifer L. Dyck , Richard E. Mayer, BASIC versus natural language: is there one underlying comprehension process?, ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, v.16 n.4, p.221-223, April 1985
	Tony Coulson , Conrad Shayo , Lorne Olfman , C. E. Tapie Rohm, ERP training strategies: conceptual training and the formation of accurate mental models, Proceedings of the 2003 SIGMIS conference on Computer personnel research: Freedom in Philadelphia--leveraging differences and diversity in the IT workforce, April 10-12, 2003, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
	Ken Halland , Katherine Malan, Reflections by teachers learning to program, Proceedings of the 2003 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on Enablement through technology, p.165-172, September 17-19, 2003
	David Ginat , Owen Astrachan , Daniel D. Garcia , Mark Guzdial, "But it looks right!": the bugs students don't see, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.36 n.1, March 2004
	Jennifer Jerrams-Smith, An Intelligent Human-Computer Interface for Provisionof On-Line Help, Artificial Intelligence Review, v.14 n.1-2, p.5-22, April 2000
	Linda Grandell , Mia Peltomäki , Ralph-Johan Back , Tapio Salakoski, Why complicate things?: introducing programming in high school using Python, Proceedings of the 8th Austalian conference on Computing education, p.71-80, January 16-19, 2006, Hobart, Australia
	Linxiao Ma , John Ferguson , Marc Roper , Murray Wood, Investigating the viability of mental models held by novice programmers, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.39 n.1, March 2007
	Matthew C. Jadud, Methods and tools for exploring novice compilation behaviour, Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Computing education research, September 09-10, 2006, Canterbury, United Kingdom
	James B. Fenwick, Jr. , Cindy Norris , Frank E. Barry , Josh Rountree , Cole J. Spicer , Scott D. Cheek, Another look at the behaviors of novice programmers, Proceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education, March 04-07, 2009, Chattanooga, TN, USA
	Linxiao Ma , John Ferguson , Marc Roper , Isla Ross , Murray Wood, Improving the mental models held by novice programmers using cognitive conflict and jeliot visualisations, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.41 n.3, September 2009
	Yan Zhang, Undergraduate students' mental models of the Web as an information retrieval system, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, v.59 n.13, p.2087-2098, November 2008
	Juha Sorva, The same but different students' understandings of primitive and object variables, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computing Education Research, November 13-16, 2008, Koli, Finland