The Analyzing of the Computer Science Learning Habits of the Freshmen Mechanical Engineering Students on the Obuda University in the Last Five Years

Abstract

Aim of this research to analysing the learning habit of the freshmen undergraduate mechanical engineering students in the first semester and compare it in the last five years. The students have to pass two tests until the semester the first on the 6th-7th week the second on the 13th-14th week. Between the tests the students may to participate on the presentations. My personal experience shows the big part of the students until the presentation period do not have learned the teaching material week in week out just have visited the presentations or simple stayed at home. The situation is unfortunately same by other subject too at the university and the colleagues have same experience from other universities and colleges in Hungary. The learning habit of the undergraduate mechanical engineering students could be following and analysing if we can see the details of the downloading of the teaching materials. The Students may download the teaching material of basic Computer Science from an own developed web based system. The material is accessible in the system just after the presentation, on the same day the students have the opportunity to save read and learn it. They get username and password to log into this system, which logs the download saving usernames and the time of each file transfer. A huge mass of data makes possible a statistical audit and the analysing based on. The analysing of the data made possible to draw conclusions regarding the learning habits of undergraduate mechanical engineering students. I analysed the saved data of downloads in the last five years to see the changing of the learning habits of the students if is it recognisable. We can draw the inference on learning habits analyzing the distribution of downloads before the test. The prepared two chart show frequency of downloads depending on time. On the first chart we can see the frequency of downloads before the first test, on the next chart the frequency of downloads before the second test. We can see one-one peak on the charts it means most downloads took place the day before the first test and the second test. The overwhelming part of students wanted to learn the material only one day before the test. On the days of tests we can see a little bit lower number of downloads. The result of the analysing shows the students downloaded the teaching material on the day of test or the previous day. It means these students did not have enough time to read, understand and learn the teaching material before the test and these habits do not have changed in the last five years. The earlier analysing showed the situation is same in the first semester and the undergraduate mechanical engineering students did not recognise the advantage of the learning earlier before the test. I have found strong correlation between the days before the test and the number of downloads of teaching material. It needs a didactical method to motivate the students to download the teaching material earlier and read it to pass the tests in higher percentage because this learning habit has influence on the results of the successful exams too.