Searching for Barriers to Learning Iteration and Runtime in Computer Science

The knowledge about misconceptions of programming beginners can help the instructors to improve their lessons and exercises and to eliminate barriers to learning. However, there is not much research about learning barriers, like misconceptions, in computer science education. This paper explains the goals and first results of our survey in this area. We interviewed 60 students in a pretest and 110 students in a test [8] to observe whether misconceptions about iterations and runtime are following underlying intuitive rules. Our results are verifying an underlying rule and unveiling two new misconceptions, which -- to the best of the authors' knowledge - have not been mentioned in literature yet. The results could help teachers to prevent learners' misconceptions.