"We present empirical findings from using an interactive electronic textbook (eTextbook) system named OpenDSA to teach sophomore- and junior-level Computer Science courses. The web-based eTextbook infrastructure allows us to collect large amounts of data that can provide detailed information about students’ study behavior. In particular we were interested in seeing if the students will attempt to manipulate the electronic resources so as to receive credit without deeply going through the materials. We found that a majority of students do not read the text. On the other hand, we found evidence that students voluntarily complete additional exercises (after obtaining credit for completion) as a study aid prior to exams. We determined that visualization use was fairly high (even when credit for their completion was not offered). Skipping to the end of slideshows was more common when credit for their completion was offered, but also occurred when it was not. We measured the level of use of mobile devices for learning by CS students. Almost all students did not associate their mobile devices with studying. The only time they accessed OpenDSA from a mobile device was for a quick look up, and never for in depth study."
Eric Fouh, Daniel A. Breakiron, Sally Hamouda, Mohammed F. Farghally, Clifford A. Shaffer, Exploring students learning behavior with an interactive etextbook in computer science courses, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 41, 2014, Pages 478-485, ISSN 0747-5632, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.09.061.
1. SUMMARY
There are some manipulative behaviors from students in order to get learning credits without going through the learning materials properly. Students’ use of mobile device for learning (OpenDSA) is minimal. The study involved 700 students between Spring 2013 and Spring 2014.
2. STRENGTHS
- OpenDSA appears to be a good learning platform for Data Structures and Algorithms and supports robust data logging with 200 different types of events.
- The paper is easy to read and was accompanied by plenty of data charts.
3. WEAKNESSES
- Learning behaviors should not be measured by a fixed perception of the “right” behaviors which the paper relies on.
- Moreover, the paper was not able to measure other learning behaviors that are not complex and may give further important insights. For example, the paper did not consider the situation where a student opens multiple windows - opening the exercise on one window while reading course materials on the other window. The paper did not track to see whether students return to the slides after their initial skimming.
- The paper also makes specific, quantitative assumptions with no rigor academic backing (number of seconds spent on a slide and what actually happens).
- The paper recognized that not so many students used openDSA on mobile devices. The research team also noticed some disagreements among their gathered sets of results but they did not pursue further investigations into the problem. A simple browse of the OpenDSA online textbook websites revealed that the sites are not mobile friendly (no custom CSS for mobile devices).
