Work In Progress: How student use Lecture Notes in an Operating Systems Course Osvaldo Clua
María Feldgen
Facultad de Ingeniería Universidad de Buenos Aires Argentina
[email protected]
Facultad de Ingeniería Universidad de Buenos Aires Argentina
[email protected]
Abstract—In our Operating Systems course we make available in advance the lecture slides and lab sessions material. The slides are built paying attention to present the key ideas and with embedded links to sites in the Web where the topic is covered in greater detail. We also provide the corresponding excerpts of selected textbooks. Following the download activity and paying attention on what our students are doing during the lectures, we are able to collect some data on notes usage. By carefully selecting some questions in the test we can distinguish which student used the material available in links and excerpts. In this paper we present some patterns of use of the lecture notes. est
student does not attend to the lecture, she/he is supposed to search more information in order to force a personal encoding of the provided key ideas. This approach can lead to a surface learning-strategy where students tend to rotelearn by heart repeating only the provided key phrases with no further elaboration. The opposite approach is to provide detailed notes which are close to textbook detail.
Student Notes; Hypertext; Student Attendance; Operating Systems
I.
INTRODUCTION
In a classical work [1] a description of the potential benefits of note taking and reviewing is presented. Note taking and reviewing are labeled in the literature as encoding and external storage respectively. Encoding is described as generating a personalized written record of the lecture or the class activity. Storage is keeping this written record during the gap between presentation and evaluation and use the record for review or study guide. There are several studies on the benefits of both functions [2] [3] with the storage function having an apparent greater impact. However these researches are related to the humanities. In Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) the storage function appears more standardized and is supplemented by other course materials, mainly books and Internet available information. The potential productivity of reviewing notes is limited by the encoding function of the note taker. If key ideas are missed or misinterpreted, students start at a disadvantage when reviewing the material. In addition, students are notoriously incomplete note-takers, generally recording less than 50% of the critical ideas [2] [3]. These facts are addressed by providing students with instructor's notes. Providing that notes are to be made available to students, there is a question concerning the detail of the material. Some teachers use skeletal notes in the form of slides, supporting a further development of the subject. This detailed development can be made in the lecture. If the
II.
INSTRUCTOR'S NOTES FOR STUDENTS
We decided to make available to students the slides we use to develop our lectures in the basic theory track. There are skeletal notes with the key ideas hoping to complement the coding function of note taking. As for helping with the storage function two levels of details are added to this first skeleton: embedded links in the slides to selected web pages and excerpts of the course recommended books. As a final information source, course main and consulting books are available at the institution's library. The slides notes follow the same pattern we do when we explain the subject in class. The hypertext links are real world examples or more detailed explanations of these key concepts. Slides are projected during the lectures and selected hyperlinks were explored and augmented with searches leading to videos, animations, and other material. When real world examples are wanted, product logos are inserted in the slides and links to product descriptions are used. After some time the linked pages migrate and finally we decided to link Wikipedia pages as an intermediate step. III.
HOW STUDENTS USE THE MATERIAL
Mean enrollment in the course is around 80 students. There are very few drop-outs. Attendance to lectures is not mandatory and when students get the idea that the whole subject is covered by the material with no “hidden surprises” they begin to skip classes. In end of course surveys, other courses pressure and homework are blamed for this desertion. Usually we move after midterm to a lesser Lab with a capacity for 30 stations. We call this use of notes as substitutional use because students believe that a careful study of the material can substitute classroom attendance. By the end of the term, attendance was reduced to a 30% of the enrolled students.
This study was supported with the grants I333 and I226 from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
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Figure 1 .Week attendance rate
Other students use the material as a supplement or a guide for their study, according to their learning style. In spite of our use of annotation tools, and specifically addressing these kind of tools in our lectures, very few students made use of electronic annotations, most of them after our presentations. Not even do they use text editors on the provided computers. We do not tape the lectures or the lab sessions. Students are very concerned about their privacy and recording the session is seen as intimidating. However we observed that many students brought printed copies of the slides. It seems that a printed copy defeats the whole purpose of the hypertext. Some of the students annotate the slides explaining in their own words the meaning of the key ideas. Other highlight when we followed some links and in some cases the URL are copied. All of these activities can be made automatic using tools like the ones we use in our presentations. We expected students to annotate their pdf version of the slides and to use some cloud storage system like Dropbox to made them available later at home but this behavior was seldom observed. IV. GRADES In the following sections we use a three pass grades scale. These are not the final grades the students got because the final grades are obtained using a mix of the test, the team work performance and scripting midterm examination. 90 80 70
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is a subject at junior level and students are well trained to know when they are to ready to pass the test. In Figure 2 we plot the attendance and the earned grades. The figure shows clearly that the substitutional use of the provided material is not a good strategy if a student wants to earn a good grade. In our country motivations for a good grade are more intrinsic to the student than institutional. There is no honor program or GPA. In surveys completed online after they approve the subjects, students acknowledge the importance of class attendance. They find a greater engagement with the subject in the face to face interaction. However working only with the material pays for students who actually are not able to assist to the lectures and have a real interest in the subject. In order to know if the links embedded in the slides have some effects, some questions ask for material addressed in the first order links. Figure 3 relates the reading with the grades. 90 80
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Figure 2. Attendance and grades in 2011
Very few students fail the test. Actually the number has been steadily increasing in the last years. Operating systems
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Figure 3. Reading the material of the embedded links and/or books
Answers that show the use of links also show the use of textbooks. It is clear from the style the answer is written and the precision the used technical jargon. Interesting enough, we found no mention of the commercial products we refer to in slides using logos and links V. CONCLUDING REMARKS There is little doubt that the coverage of the material is useful for the students at least in two ways; students are able to pass the course without attending to the lectures and students who really are engaged get the supplemental material they want. Students do not show advanced technology uses in our lectures. This is opposed to the idea of the ‘digital natives’, a generation of tech-savvy young people immersed in digital technologies for which current education systems cannot cater. Further research is needed but some confirmation of this trend is beginning to show up in the literature [4] [5]. Students seem to look to their lecturers for clues as to how to use technology tools for learning. REFERENCES [1]
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Figure 1 shows attendance rates in the two 2011 terms. The very low rates at weeks 9 in the first and week 10 in the second term reflect other subject’s homework deadlines. In average we have half of the enrollment attending lectures. We consider high attendance students to those who attended at least to six out of twelve classes.
[2] [3] [4] [5]
F. J. Di Vesta and G. S. Gray, “Listening and note taking,” Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 63, no. 1, pp. 8–14, 1972. K..Kiewra, The process of review: A levels of processing approach. Contemporary Educational Psychology, no 8, pp 366–374, 1983. K..Kiewra,. Investigating note taking review: A depth of processing alternative. Educational Psychologist, no 20, pp 23–32, 1985. A. Margaryan, A. Littlejohn, and G. Vojt, “Are digital natives a myth or reality? University students’ use of digital technologies,” Computers & Education, vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 429–440, 2011. E. J. Helsper, R. Eynon, “Digital natives: where is the evidence?” British Educ Research Journal, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 503–520, 2010.
