Relationship between time management in courses with online interactive textbooks and students' performance

Abstract

The study aims to explore the relationship between time management in courses with online interactive textbooks and students' performance. The study was done in two computer science courses — a second-year course on discrete mathematics for computer science and a first-year programming course. Each course used a required online interactive textbook on the course topic. Students had reading assignments that consisted of reading specified sections from the textbook and doing interactive activities from these sections. In discrete mathematics course reading assignments on a topic were due before the class period in which the topic was discussed. In the other course reading assignments were due after the material was discussed in class. For each student, we measured whether they tended to finish reading assignments early or late. We studied the relationship between this tendency of students and their academic performance in the courses. We found that students who tended to do their reading assignments early performed statically significantly better than students who tended to do their reading assignments late in discrete mathematics course where reading assignments were due before topics were discussed in class. In the other course, there was no statistically significant difference in performance among these groups of students.