5. The Nomenclature of Organic Compounds 5.3 Results

5.3.5 Learning Strategies

Students were asked which sections of the package they had worked through in order to determine the way in which the students worked through the package. Table 6 below shows the number of students working through each section.

TABLE 6: SECTIONS OF PACKAGE COMPLETED - ALL STUDENTS SECTION FREQUENCY PERCENT VALID PERCENT Alkanes Worked through 358 95.2 95.5 Did not work through 17 4.5 4.5 Missing Answers 1 .3 ----- Total 376 100 100 Unsaturated Aliphatic Hydrocarbons Worked through 312 83.0 83.2 Did not work through 63 16.8 16.8 Missing Answers 1 .3 ----- Total 376 100 100 Functional Group Nomenclature Worked through 191 50.8 50.9 Did not work through 184 48.9 49.1 Missing Answers 1 .3 ----- Total 376 100 100

Table 6 shows that most people worked their way through the package from beginning to end, with 95% doing section 1 - Alkanes and 83% doing section 2 - Unsaturated Aliphatic Hydrocarbons. The third section was only studied by 51% of the study group and therefore it would not be surprising that the other 49% made few learning gains in that section of the material. "Today I started at the beginning and worked my way through but I found Alkanes straightforward and I found the next section straightforward and it would have been the third section that would have benefited me the most but I didn't get round to it" - Discussion group - Liverpool 24/10/95 "...We went right from the basics. I suppose if its meant to be taught right from scratch rather than as a refresher..." - Discussion group - Bath 9/10/95 These quotes also appear to show that the students may not have been best served by progressing through the material sequentially. Once again the physical nature of the medium probably plays a part here. Whereas the majority of students when presented with a book to read would probably browse through it to gain an overview even if told to read it through, the same is not true of students working with CAL. They appear to need more active encouragement to adopt suitable study methods. The following student had shown some initiative and adopted a different approach to the majority: "In fact, the way I started, right from the start, was I actually went straight to the questions first. So I knew what I was lacking in and then went back and skipped through the bits I knew"- Discussion group - Bath 9/10/96 In effect, this student gave himself a "pre-test", analysed his scores and selected the appropriate subsections to concentrate on. Whilst this approach deserves credit, it was the only example from any of the discussions of such an initiative and it is probably unreasonable to expect most students to show this level of ingenuity without any prompting. We should perhaps conclude, therefore that in general students need specific guidance on how to work with the package and that new study methods need to be employed by students when working with CAL. In order to build up a picture of the students' learning strategies, they were observed whilst working with the package. A summary of this is reproduced below.

TABLE 7: SUMMARY OF OBSERVATION DATA OBSERVATION MANCHESTER LIVERPOOL BATH BRIGHTON TOTAL NUMBER Student asks for help 26 49 39 21 335 Student discusses with neighbour 62 118 62 186 428 Student uses other aids 3 3 3 0 9 Student makes notes 152 110 45 32 339 Student leaves the room 4 4 1 4 13 Student returns to the room 2 4 1 4 11 Student utters negative statement 5 11 8 3 27 Student utters positive statement 2 27 9 2 40

There were two main purposes for observing students whilst they were studying the package, firstly to observe the way in which the students work and how well the package suits the learning situation. The second purpose is to be able to record any unanticipated events or reactions. Each count represents an individual student, or where the same students were writing notes repeatedly, a count was taken every five minutes. The level of requests for help is fairly evenly spread across all four centres. It is slightly higher in Liverpool where students worked in groups and may therefore refle ct the general atmosphere of collaboration and discussion. Discussion levels were very variable and students definitely appeared to adopt a "group persona" whereby the room would be largely populated by individual students, studying in virtual silence, or by groups of students frequently discussing the package (and other things) in sometimes quite a loud and uninhibited way. The taking of notes was very varied and may reflect a number of factors. Firstly, despite making every attempt to standardise all group situations, there were inevitable variations in emphasis. The emphasis placed upon taking notes was one such area and in some cases, the same person would introduce sessions to individual groups slightly differently. This may well have an effect on the whole group. Furthermore, groups take on an overall pattern and if a sizeable number of students begin by not taking notes, then this can set the pattern for the whole group. In general, there were very few unexpected events. Two people in Manchester left early as they felt ill and one person there had machine related problems. There were one or two subject related queries where the answer to a question given in the package was incorrect and challenged by the students. These will not be listed here as they are minor bug fixes which are easily rectifiable and have been passed on to the courseware developers directly. The most striking observation remains the way in which the materials needed no operational introduction, and this was consistently found to be the case with every group in the study. Where help was requested, this was usually after the first ten minutes or so, once students had settled in. This supports the results recorded in section 5.4.2 on Help Required where most help requested was related to the content of the package.