Understanding and Addressing Misconceptions in Introductory Programming: A Data-Driven Approach

With the expansion of computer science (CS) education, CS teachers in K-12 schools should be cognizant of student misconceptions and be prepared to help students establish accurate understanding of computer science and programming. This exploratory design-based research (DBR) study implemented a data-driven approach to identify secondary school students’ misconceptions using both their compilation and test errors and provide targeted feedback to promote students’ conceptual change in introductory programming. Research subjects were two groups of high school students enrolled in two sections of a Java-based programming course in a 2017 summer residential program for gifted and talented students. This study consisted of two stages. In the first stage, students of group 1 took the introductory programming class and used an automated learning system, Mulberry, which collected data on student problem-solving attempts. Data analysis was conducted to identify common programming errors students demonstrated in their programs and relevant misconceptions. In the second stage, targeted feedback to address these misconceptions was designed using principles from conceptual change and feedback theories and added to Mulberry. When students of group 2 took the same introductory programming class and solved programming problems in Mulberry, they received the targeted feedback to address their misconceptions. Data analysis was conducted to assess how the feedback affected the evolution of students’ (mis)conceptions. Using students’ erroneous solutions, 55 distinct compilation errors were identified, and 15 of them were categorized as common ones. The 15 common compilation errors accounted for 92% of all compilation errors. Based on the 15 common compilation errors, three underlying student misconceptions were identified, including deficient knowledge of fundamental Java program structure, misunderstandings of Java expressions, and confusion about Java variables. In addition, 10 common test errors were identified based on nine difficult problems. The results showed that 54% of all test errors were related to the difficult problems, and the 10 common test errors accounted for 39% of all test errors of the difficult problems. Four common student misconceptions were identified based on the 10 common test errors, including misunderstandings of Java input, misunderstandings of Java output, confusion about Java operators, and forgetting to consider special cases. Both quantitative and qualitative data analysis were conducted to see whether and how the targeted feedback affected students’ solutions. Quantitative analysis indicated that targeted feedback messages enhanced students’ rates of improving erroneous solutions. Group 2 students showed significantly higher improvement rates in all erroneous solutions and solutions with common errors compared to group 1 students. Within group 2, solutions with targeted feedback messages resulted in significantly higher improvement rates compared to solutions without targeted feedback messages. Results suggest that with targeted feedback messages students were more likely to correct errors in their code. Qualitative analysis of students’ solutions of four selected cases determined that students of group 2, when improving their code, made fewer intermediate incorrect solutions than students in group 1. The targeted feedback messages appear to have helped to promote conceptual change. The results of this study suggest that a data-driven approach to understanding and addressing student misconceptions, which is using student data in automated assessment systems, has the potential to improve students’ learning of programming and may help teachers build better understanding of their students’ common misconceptions and develop their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). The use of automated assessment systems with misconception identification components may be helpful in pre-college introductory programming courses and so is encouraged as K-12 CS education expands. Researchers and developers of automated assessment systems should develop components that support identifying common student misconceptions using both compilation and non-compilation errors. Future research should continue to investigate the use of targeted feedback in automated assessment systems to address students’ misconceptions and promote conceptual change in computer science education

Programming Process, Patterns and Behaviors: Insights from Keystroke Analysis of CS1 Students

With all the experiences and knowledge, I take programming as granted. But learning to program is still difficult for a lot of introductory programming students. This is also one of the major reasons for a high attrition rate in CS1 courses. If instructors were able to identify struggling students then effective interventions can be taken to help them. This thesis is a research done on programming process data that can be collected non-intrusively from CS1 students when they are programming. The data and their findings can be leveraged in understanding students’ thought process, detecting patterns and identifying behaviors that could possibly help instructors to identify struggling students, help them and design better courses

A Digital Practice Tool for Chemical Resonance

Digital practice tools support online learning in math, language, computer science, and other subjects, but practice with problems whose answers are not well represented by text or quantities is underrepresented in the digital learning ecosystem beyond multiple-choice questions. This thesis project explored an alternative to multiple choice practice problems in organic chemistry that does not rely on a molecule drawing interface. This project included development and evaluation of a proof-of-concept digital practice tool for chemical resonance problems. Results of a utility study strongly suggest that the practice tool could fill a learning niche within organic chemistry practice as part of a larger integrated learning environment. The study supported the idea that the digital practice tool and others like it can meet different needs for certain learners, such as reinforcing concepts visually, allowing learners to pace themselves, encouraging learners, and providing immediate feedback. Lastly, this project identified generalizable design challenges for similar practice tools, including the need for a known deployment context, curating content for diverse learner backgrounds, and managing appropriate difficulty for diverse learner backgrounds and needs

Development of a formative assessment instrument to determine students’ need for corrective actions in physics:Identifying students’ functional level of understanding

In physics education, most teachers provide students feedback on their problem solutions through grades on written tests. The practice of feedback after a summative test does not often meet the needs of many students to improve their problem solving. In this paper we report on the development of a formative assessment instrument to allow teachers to provide more meaningful action-oriented feedback on students’ performance on written tests.Our research and development approach comprised three phases.The first phase consisted of a literature guided cognitive analysis of effective problem-solving strategies in the physics domain. This analysis resulted in the identification of three crucial episodes in students’ problem-solving approaches during which students engage in specific cognitive activities. The second phase consisted of the design of an assessment instrument to monitor specific cognitive activities during the three crucial episodes when solving physics problems. This resulted in a rating scale with 11 levels to indicate students’ efficacy. The third phase consisted of research of the validity, reliability, and practicality of the instrument. Here we trained three teachers to trace students’ mistakes on different problems in the domain of kinematics and asked them to rate the mastery of 16 eleventh-grade pre-university students. In this phase we assessed the reliability and validity of this instrument by computing Krippendorff's alpha to indicate teachers’ inter-rater reliability. Practicality of the instrument was assessed by examining the variation in students’ level of mastery on problems of different complexity. Further research is needed to provide more detailed guidelines for how teachers can use the instrument in formative assessment (in contrast to summative assessment) to help students to develop correct solution methods and foster students’ metacognition about problem solving in related physics areas (i.e., knowledge transfer)

THE EFFECTS OF TEACHER INTERACTIVE FEEDBACK ON EFL STUDENTS’ PARAGRAPH WRITING PERFORMANCE

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of using teacher interactive feedback (TIF) on students' paragraph writing performance. Furthermore, it examines students' attitudes towards this strategy. The study took place in a lower secondary school and used both qualitative and quantitative data. Participants were 86 students who were randomly assigned to the experimental group (EG) and the control group (CG). While students in the EG learned to write the paragraph utilizing the TIF, students in the CG learned to write the paragraph using the traditional technique. Before the intervention, students in both groups took a pre-test to gauge their level of writing proficiency. The results were then compared to relevant data. The experiment spanned eight weeks during which a post-test was then administered to students in both groups to evaluate their development, particularly that of the EG. To obtain insights into TIF, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were conducted. The findings from the study demonstrated a considerable improvement in paragraph writing skills through interactive feedback (IF) and paragraph writing instruction. Additionally, the majority of students showed their enthusiasm towards learning to write using TIF and expected to continue practicing this strategy in the future.  Article visualizations

Journal of Education Innovation and Communication, December 2019, The value of pedagogical knowledge: an international perspective

The publications of the Communication Institute of Greece, such as the “Journal of Education, Innovation, and Communication (JEICOM)”, are open access without any costs for the authors or the readers. JEICOM is a Fully Peer-Reviewed, Open Access journal, publishing articles from all areas of education, innovation and communication, independent of the events organized by the Communication Institute of Greece. JEICOM’s scope is to provide a free and open platform to academics, researchers, professionals, and postgraduate students to communicate and share knowledge in the form of high quality empirical and theoretical research that is of high interest not only for academic readers but also for practitioners and professionals. JEICOM welcomes theoretical, conceptual and empirical original research papers, case studies, book reviews that demonstrate the innovative and dynamic spirit for the education and communication sciences, from researchers, scholars, educators, policy-makers, and practitioners in education, communication, and related fields. Articles that show scholarly depth, breadth or richness of different aspects of social pedagogy are particularly welcome. The numerous papers presented every year during the conferences organized by the Communication Institute of Greece, enables us to have access to a plethora of papers. Following a rigorous peer- review process, only a selection of these papers submitted is published biannually. In addition, to the papers presented in the Institute’s conference, we do encourage independent submissions of papers too. Nevertheless, before you submit, please make sure to respect the guidelines and templates provided. The current issue of the “Journal of Education, Innovation, and Communication (JEICOM)”, is our Second Issue for 2019 (December 2019). We consider that education and fruitful exchange can improve our lives with the view to nurture intercultural communication. Academics can contribute significantly to the quality of the educational experience and help educate, communicate, exchange, meet new cultures, create and collaborate! We wish you an excellent reading and for the year to come soon, 2020, Health, Love, Knowledge, Education, Prosperity, Communication and Exchange

Thinking beyond the words: strengthening reading comprehension for students with ASD

The purpose of this project is to provide a handbook for classroom and special education teachers. This handbook is to assist teachers helping their students with ASD to develop reading comprehension skills. This project begins with background information regarding ASD and prevalence rates for ASD along with a discussion about reading comprehension. A literature review outlines the difficulties students with ASD have with reading comprehension and examines the specific areas with which students struggle. An outline of how the project is structured is given and finally a handbook is presented that outlines strategies for teachers to use for each area of deficit which students may encounter. The handbook provides a variety of strategies for each area identified

Effects of Error-Based Simulation as a Counterexample for Correcting MIF Misconception

MIF (Motion Implies a Force) misconception is commonly observed in elementary mechanics learning where students think some force is applied to moving objects. This paper reports a practical use of Error-based Simulation (EBS) for correcting students’ MIF misconceptions in a junior high school and a technical college. EBS is a method to generate a phenomenon by using stu-dents’ erroneous idea (e.g., if a student thinks forward force applied to a skater traveling straight on ice at a constant velocity, EBS shows the skater acceler-ates). Such a phenomenon is supposed to work as a counterexample to students’ misconception. In the practice, students first worked on pre-test of five prob-lems (called ‘learning task’), in each of which they drew all the forces applied to objects in a mechanical situation. They then worked on the same problems on system where EBSs were shown based on their answer. They last worked on post-test of the previous plus four new problems (called ‘transfer task’). As a result, in both schools, the numbers of MIF-answers (the erroneous answers supposed due to MIF misconception) in learning task decreased significantly between pre-test and post-test. Effect sizes of the decrease of MIF-answers were larger than that of other erroneous answers. Additionally, the percentages of MIF-answers to the whole erroneous answers in transfer task were much lower than those in learning task. These results suggest learning with EBS not only has the effect on the resolution of MIF misconception, but also promoted the correction of errors in conceptual level.'Artificial Intelligence in Education' 18th International Conference, AIED 2017, Wuhan, China, June 28 – July 1, 2017, Proceeding