WIP: Common Programming Mistakes by Students in an Introductory Embedded Systems Course

This work-in-progress innovative practice paper describes programming mistakes commonly made by students in an introductory embedded systems course and explains them using an antipattern framework. Students in introductory programming courses make mistakes in their code resulting in compile-time and run-time errors that may be difficult to understand as novice programmers. Error messages and debugging tools may not offer much help to novice programmers. Recent work in programming education is using language-specific antipatterns to characterize common errors. Antipatterns (mistakes or errors) can be identified in student code, and students then receive tutorial-oriented feedback to explain the error in terms familiar to them from the course. Software tools are automating the process of providing feedback to students about antipatterns found in their code. In this paper, we describe the study being conducted to identify and classify common antipatterns in C code written by students in an introductory embedded systems course. Antipattern data are being collected from the literature, inspection of student code, and instructor, teaching assistant, and student observations and interviews. Relevant and understandable feedback for each antipattern is also being collected and composed. We are also interested in how antipatterns by students evolve over time, the effect of feedback, and how different development environments support feedback to students. This paper summarizes preliminary results of the study, including several embedded C antipatterns, code examples, and feedback. This work has the potential to improve embedded system teaching and learning. The focus on novice programmers highlights the need for specialized educational tools for this group of students and the potential to further personalize individual learning.