Student Mistakes in Introductory Programming: Sample Problems

Learning to program is a challenging task for novice learners. This study aimed to investigate students ’ concepts as they were being formed. To capture these, we chose to focus on students who made some mistakes in basic concepts. Our study sought to capture students ’ conceptions at a very early stage in their study: five weeks into an introductory programming course. We invited students who did not pass an early mastery test at their first attempt to participate in a diagnostic and remedial session. In this poster we look at a sample of the original problems given to these students and an analysis of the number of questions incorrectly answered by each of the students that failed the early mastery test