Dear student,

Dr Wynand van Staden, Mr Colin Pilkington and I (Prof Ian Sanders) are undertaking a research
study in an attempt to determine and categorise students misconceptions in designing Finite
Automata to recognise given languages. This research will assist us in designing interventions
which will be of benefit to future students studying COS2601 and COS3701. The research will
also contribute to a larger project which looks at designing tools for use in COS2601 and
COS3701.
For us to proceed with this research, we require your assistance. To be involved in the research
you would need to do three things.
1. Complete the design exercises below (or as many of them as you can).
If you cannot complete any of the exercises we would still like to see your partial
solutions or any ideas you have about how to tackle the problem. You can also comment
on what aspects of the exercises you find particularly difficult or confusing. Any
information that you can provide could be of use to us.
2. Read and sign the consent form on the next page.
3. Email the signed consent form with your solutions to sandeid@unisa.ac.za by the 15 of
March 2015.
We will provide you with feedback on your solutions before the final examinations for the two
modules.
Note that once we have received your solutions and your signed consent form, we will remove
any identifying information from the solutions and replace that with a study code number. Our
analysis will be done on the anonymised solutions.
We will only report on the results of our study in terms of these anonymised solutions. In any
reports or publications which ensue from this research we will only use the study code numbers
and will not include any information which could identify you.
Regards

Prof I D Sanders

Study Exercises
1. Design a Finite Automaton to recognise any language that has at least one a.
2. Design a Finite Automaton to recognise any language which starts with an a.
3. Design a Finite Automaton to recognise any language that contains words which have
exactly one b.
4. Design a Finite Automaton to recognise any language that contains words with at least
one ab and one ba. Note that the ab must appear before the ba.
5. Design a Finite Automaton to recognise any language that contains words with exactly
one ab or with exactly one ba.

Informed consent form

Computing Students Misconceptions in Designing Finite Automata

This study is being conducted by Ian Sanders, Colin Pilkington and Wynand van Staden who are
undertaking research at the University of South Africa (UNISA). The aim of this project is to try to
determine common misconceptions that computing students (second year and third year level) have in
designing Finite Automata (FA).
Informed consent
1. Voluntary participation: You are not required to submit the FA. You may also withdraw your
participation at any time.
2. Confidentiality: The information produced by this study will be confidential and private. When
reporting the results of the study we will not use your name or any information which could potentially
identify you.
3. Benefits: We do not anticipate a direct benefit to you for completing the study. However, you will be
providing valuable information that will inform decision making in the future.
Name and contact details of the researchers
Ian Sanders, Colin Pilkington and Wynand van Staden
School of Computing
Unisa
011-471-2858
I (full name) ______________________________________________________ ,
Student number ________________________________ ,
have read and understood this consent form, and willingly give permission that my responses to the FA
design exercise be used as part of the study described above.

_____________________________
Signature

__________________________
Date