Competency Demo - Misconceptions

This week you read about:

 

One of the connecting themes in these readings is the idea of conceptions and misconceptions. For this week's competency demo I want you to discuss one of the times you were confronted with your own misconception when you were learning to program (either in last fall's Fundamentals of Programming class or even prior to that). I recognize that this question is highly dependent on your individual experiences and your ability to recall them. In the question below I have tried to give you some guidance to help you recall an appopriate event to write about. If you are significantly struggling with this I would ask you to please reach out to me and we can identify an alternative

 

In the final paper of the week, "Tackling Novice Learners' Naive Conceptions in Introductory Programming" (pp 112-113) Dr. Shuchi Grover talks about several common misconceptions that students may hold as they learn about programming. Examples include:

    • The concept of the "super bug" which she defines this as "the belief that a computer can somehow interpret a student's intention with some sort of intelligent interpretive process."
    • How variables are stored and managed
    • How loops execute the code inside of the loops and/or manage when and how they execute
    • Confusion regarding boolean logic - in particular when combining multiple expressions using and / or operators

Identify two misconceptions you had about computer programming when you started Fundamentals of Programming in the fall (these can come from the list in Dr. Grover's article or something completey new that you remember being a misconception.

For each, discuss this misconception and how you came to realize that your perception was incorrect.

Use this as a starting point to discuss how you could identify this misconception in your students and how you would help them realize their own misconception.

 

Submission

This counts as a competency demo in the course. In other words, each question will be assigned a score of 0-4 and an overall grade for the activity will be assigned.

While these questions are somewhat a matter of opinion - that is, they have multiple "right answers" - they can still be graded for competence based on how well you explain and defend your answer(s). Recognize that the degree to which you do so will have an impact on your grade.

Please submit this via Blackboard by the end of the week.