Qualitative content analysis of programming errors

Philipp Shah, Marc Berges, Peter Hubwieser

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

In computer science education, the analysis of source code with errors is of interest as programming errors may give a hint to misconceptions. The analysis of misconceptions can help teachers to improve their exercises and lessons. The semantic analysis of texts or video sequences could lead to different, subjective interpretation. This problem also effects source code errors, which could contain semantic errors. In different projects, we were confronted with a lot of incorrect source codes, which were written by students of universities and secondary schools. A first analysis of these errors led to a categorization of errors regarding missing competencies. To avoid mainly subjective interpretation of source code errors a standardized method for categorizing errors, which could also be applied by a practitioner, has to be developed and justified. Categorizing texts or source code errors is a matter of semantics, because text or code elements have to be interpreted. Thus, a qualitative content analysis is most suitable. In this paper we explain the difference between errors and misconceptions and present our adaption of the qualitative content analysis of Mayring to source code errors.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of 2017 5th International Conference on Information and Education Technology, ICIET 2017
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages161-166
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781450348034
DOIs
StatePublished - 10 Jan 2017
Event5th International Conference on Information and Education Technology, ICIET 2017 - Tokyo, Japan
Duration: 10 Jan 201712 Jan 2017

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference5th International Conference on Information and Education Technology, ICIET 2017
Country/TerritoryJapan
CityTokyo
Period10/01/1712/01/17

Keywords

  • Error categorization
  • Misconceptions
  • Programming errors
  • Qualitative research method
  • Source code errors, content analysis

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Qualitative content analysis of programming errors'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this