Premium
What happens when students copy notes with different content and layout from an overhead screen? How often do they glance up and how accurate are they?
Author(s) -
Mahalski Pauline A
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
british journal of educational technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.79
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-8535
pISSN - 0007-1013
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8535.1995.tb00116.x
Subject(s) - copying , overhead projector , computer science , paragraph , reading (process) , overhead (engineering) , sentence , note taking , multimedia , arithmetic , artificial intelligence , linguistics , visual arts , world wide web , art , programming language , mathematics , operating system , philosophy , political science , law
Twenty university students (ten men and ten women) were videotaped while they copied two sets of notes with different layouts from an overhead projector screen. They were timed as they read silently a prose passage and wrote a familiar sentence five times. Copying speed was related to writing speed but not to reading speed. Copying was faster and errors fewer when a paragraph of unfamiliar notes was laid out to emphasise the meaningful structure of the text. Similar changes to the layout of familiar notes already structured into meaningful parts did not reduce copying time or errors. The intervals between the students’glances was very variable and ranged from 3.2‐13.8 sec which has implications for the study of human information processing. The average student made 12 copying errors and those who glanced least often made the most errors. The practical implications of the results were discussed.