Efficiency of Dikte on Note Taking

This theme assesses the efficiency of Dikte on note taking in terms of minimising the time-spent for note taking and providing comprehensible classroom notes. The note taking skills of students with DHI were also analysed and reported. Overall, the data suggested positive views for the note-taking capacity of Dikte. The professionally taken lecture notes were particularly appreciated by both the teachers and the students. In addition, there were some varying views in relation to the reports on the note-taking skills of the students with DHI.

The data from interviews with teachers and students highlighted that Dikte has the capacity to considerably decrease the time needed for note taking. For instance, student 3 pointed out that “I was given Dikte hand-outs after some of the classes. This was very helpful because I was spending lots of time for note taking in lessons.” In support of this view, student 8 reported “My teachers usually write everything on the board and we copy it [into our notebooks], and spend too much time. But now [referring to Dikte] we do not have to do that, the teachers provide us lecture notes.” Similarly teachers reported that “It [Dikte] has decreased the time my students spend on writing down the covered topics into their notebooks.” (Teacher 5) and “What I liked the most [about Dikte] is that it provides print-outs of what was covered in the class. This comforted me because we spend most of our classroom time waiting for the students to write down the sentences into their notebooks.” (Teacher 2) and lastly “Some of my students copy the board letter by, and it kills lots of time. But with Dikte, we saved lots of time” (Teacher 15).

The teachers commented on the benefit of Dikte for transcribing the teachers’ verbal information in written format, and demonstrating them on the board by a projector, which helped them to save a lot of time. The responses regarding this advantage included “With Dikte, I have just explained the topics and they were written on the board, so I did not have to write them on the board which saved lots of time. They [my words] were on the board in a few seconds” (Teacher 10), “It [Dikte] really decreased the amount of time that I spent on writing on the board by hand which took at least 5-10 minutes and I also needed to explain this simultaneously” (Teacher 1) and “Sometimes I need to write the stories of some topics on the board which is time consuming. Dikte is effective in this regard, and even within two months helped me a lot, because I told the stories into Dikte and got them written on the board” (Teacher 13).

Findings from interviews with teachers suggested that transcribing lectures into text format and forming classroom notes were valuable. The teachers mainly edited these notes at the end of the lessons to correct spelling errors, reorganise sentences or delete unnecessary information to provide

professionally taken classroom notes for students. It is worthwhile to note that the teachers described the students’ note-taking skills by using adjectives such as “unskilful.” “meaningless,” “non-sense,” “useless,” and “poorly-taken.” The teachers argued that students with DHI were not usually good at both capturing exactly what happens in the classrooms and taking notes on the topics properly. The following interview reports support this view: One teacher stated “I should say that these students often miss lots of

information during note taking. In this regard, I think Dikte was an effective and helpful tool to produce professional notes for them,” (Teacher 2) while another teacher discussed “Now, when I look at the other classes in which I did not use Dikte, the notes taken by my students are very weak and are often missing a lot of information. So Dikte notes are important. They produce notes of exactly what is covered, and guarantee taking correct notes” (Teacher 13). It was also reported that “My students are quite bad at taking notes, I mean they sometimes cannot even read their own notes. I was able to provide accurate classroom notes for them [with Dikte]” (Teacher 15). Principal C explained this issue “I saw that with short training, we can create very professional texts [referring to Dikte-produced notes]. I really liked distributing edited classroom notes to the students at the end of each class. This is something that we have big difficulty in at this school: making students take good notes; most of them cannot even capture very basic information. So Dikte was very helpful in this matter.” Another interviewee approached this issue from a different angle stating “Until the beginning of this semester [second semester], my students completed 3-4 notebooks covering notes taken in the lessons, what happened to these notebooks? I guess they put them somewhere and do not use them again, or rarely look at them. Because these notes are taken very unskilfully and do not mostly make sense” (Teacher 16). Lastly, principal A commented that “I know that our students’ notes are taken very badly, I mean they are sometimes useless.”

Observational findings provided important insights into the issues revolving around the note-taking skills of students with DHI and the benefits of Dikte transcriptions. To begin with, teachers told the researcher during the implementation of Dikte that the students’ notes predominantly missed the most important information, which were not sufficient for improving either their comprehension or academic achievement. In light of its note-taking capacity, both the teachers and the students thought Dikte was helpful. Dikte hand-outs were often praised. For example, one student reported “I did not even think that the teacher has spoken that much [as opposed to the information provided by Dikte print outs]” while another said “if Dikte did not give us whole lecture notes, I would miss half the information.” Additionally, after receiving Dikte print outs and studying them, one of the students stressed that “I am very happy to get Dikte notes, because it makes me relaxed; I just sit down and listen to my teachers in the class.”