Research on potential features to enhance on-line course materials for student revision

Abstract

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017. Providing online course materials on the course website has become standard practice in most institutions. These materials are intended to support students’ study after class and especially revision before an examination. Most students download and print out these online materials uploaded by teacher, which reduces the advantages of being online. Besides which, students sometimes suffer from the stress of revising a large amount of material. Maximising the potential of these online materials as an alternative method of revision is a challenge in the area of technology enhanced learning. To address this issue and overcome the challenge, we have developed the self-revision electronic course materials framework (SRECMATs) that features direct access to specific materials through keyword browsing and keyword searching, allowing users to gain a quick overview of extracted keywords along with easy access to related materials. This feature restructures the uploaded materials and delivers intelligent online materials for students. The first prototype was developed and launched for a Design of Information Structures module in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick. This paper evaluates the proposed framework in order to assess student satisfaction, understand students’ perceptions of using the system prototype, and understand whether or not the developed features are appropriate for practical use.