ascilite2015

concept of summer learning loss. The exception to these findings was in language courses where a
statistically significant detrimental effect was found for the longer gap.
Our study explores whether students exhibit wisdom in the design of their online study plans to
minimise knowledge decay and support academic success. Any evidence would inform potential
guidance to students
and input to policy regarding structured enrolment in sequential online courses.
Methodology
Data were available for two foundation level mathematics courses. These are sequential courses at
the same year level with one (Course 1) as a prerequisite of the second (Course 2). Since 2012,
Course 1 has been offered online 11 times and Course 2, 10 times. Course topics are dissimilar – the
first course in the sequence presents basic algebra and trigonometry, the second introductory
calculus - but Course 2 relies on a familiarity with the mathematical language and methods developed
in Course 1. We define the gap as the time in between the teaching periods of the sequential
courses. The timing of offerings and duration of teaching produces gaps which are integer multiples of
3 months. Thus a student taking the follow-on course immediately after its prerequisite ends, will
experience a gap of 0 months, a student following on one study period later experiences a gap of 3
months. Rather than have a negative gap value, we denote the gap when students take both courses
simultaneously as concurrent (abbreviated as cc).
Students who achieved a pass in the first course and had attempted the second (attempting at least
one assessment) were identified. Students’ final marks for Course 2 were mapped against their study
gaps, with box and whisker graphs used to display the distribution of the data (Spitzer, Wildenhain,
Rappsilber, & Tyers, 2014). Age and final mark in Course 2 were plotted as a series of scattergrams
to represent the gaps between Course 1 and Course 2.
Results
The observed enrolment pattern amongst the 305 students comprising our data set is shown in Table
1. Most students took Course 2 at its next available delivery, more than 90% did so within 6 months.
Table 1: Proportion of students with observed study gap (cc represents concurrent
enrolments)
Gap (months) cc 0 3 6 9 12 Othe
r
Proportion
(%)
3.3 61.6 21.0 7.9 2.6 2.3 1.3
The whiskers in the boxplots of Figure 1 represent the highest and lowest marks for Course 2 for a
given gap, the dark horizontal line is the median and a rectangle shows where the central 50% of data
lie. We have added a cross to show the mean value and the number of data points in each category is
shown at the base of the boxplot.
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CP:236