What do they note? An exploratory investigation into the characteristics of CS students’ notes

Motivation. Students’ notes and learning journals could impact students’ learning in Computer Science (CS) higher education. Objectives. We aim to identify and categorize attributes of notes taken by CS students and study their effect on course performance. Method. We study and analyze notes, containing over 100,000 words, collected from 184 students using a mixed method approach. These notes represented content relevant to one lecture of an undergraduate course on introductory software development. Results. The students’ notes are found as high on verbatim content with rare instances of creativity and self-reflection, and common attributes such as highlighting and outlining are widely used. Statistical results indicate little correlation among journal attributes and course performance components. Discussion. We provide implications of our results, recommendations about note-taking for instructors, and details to support replication of our study for the CS education research community.