Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Student's Characteristics for Note Taking Activity in a Fully
Online Course
Minoru Nakayama 1 , Kouichi Mutsuura 2 and Hiroh Yamamoto 1
1
Human System Science / CRADLE, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo,
Japan
2
Faculty of Economics and Graduate School of Engineering, Shinshu
University, Matsumoto, Japan
nakayama@cradle.titech.ac.jp
Abstract: Since student's notes are a reflection of the progress of their education, analysis of notes taken can be
used to track the learning process of students who participate in fully online courses. This paper examines the
relationship between the performance of note-takers and the characteristics of these students, including their
personalities, learning experiences, information literacy and note-taking skills. A fully online course was conducted
for undergraduate students in Economics. Participants were asked to study each course module and present their
notes to the lecturer every week. The student’s learning performance was then measured using online tests,
weekly confirmation tests with a proctor, and a final exam. The total number of valid participants in the courses was
54. Three factors of note-taking skills were extracted, according to the survey. They are (1) Recognizing note taking
functions, (2) Methodology of utilizing notes and (3) Presentation of notes. The first factor score correlates with
mean scores of confirmation tests, while the third factor score correlates with online test scores. Therefore, the
three factors are responsible for different aspects of learning. The sum of the assessment scores for note-taking
correlates with mean scores of online tests (r=0.51), with confirmation tests scores (r=0.54) and with the scores of
the final exam (r=0.46). The effectiveness of the contents of the notes for exam scores was also measured.
Keywords: note taking, fully online learning, student's characteristics, learning experience, correlation analysis
1. Introduction
The online learning environment is expanding throughout the world, in particular at universities which
offer courses internationally. Though the establishment of an online learning environment requires a
great deal of resources, a cost-benefit assessment of the effectiveness and usefulness of online
courses has been made, and discussed previously. It has often been suggested that many participants
have difficulty with continuing their education online, and the evaluation of the learning process has
been restricted to the online tests and access logs in the case of online courses up until now
(Nakayama et al. 2009).
When instruction is provided face-to-face, students' evaluations of their attitudes and learning
processes can be readily observed, however. However, since most learning processes require the
transfer and summarization of knowledge using notes, note-taking has become a primary method of
evaluating conventional learning evaluation. As student's notes are a reflection of the progress of their
education, analysis of notes taken can be used to track the learning process (Kiewra 1985, 1989;
Kiewra et al. 1995; Kobayashi 2005). In previous studies, students who participated in fully online
courses were asked to take notes in order to evaluate their learning process (Nakayama et al. 2010,
2011).
This paper examines the relationship between the performance of note-takers and the characteristics of
these students, including their personalities, learning experiences, information literacy and note-taking
skills. The following topics are addressed:
To evaluate student's note-taking skills in a university level learning environment which uses ICT
(information communication technology) as a part of the course, a set of questionnaires were
developed to measure their skills. Also, some factors were extracted from the students’ self
assessments.
The relationship between the assessment of the contents of notes taken in a fully on-line learning
environment and student’s characteristics were measured to extract factors used in note-taking
activities.
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