Portfolio 2 Instructions

To complete these tasks, you need to be in a group of 4 students.

Task 1
In this task, you will analyse different texts in light of the content that has been covered in
class.

The process is as follows:

1. For the text “Going head-to-head: taking lecture notes by hand or on your laptop” (at
the end of this document), use AI tools to generate 3 different versions of the précis.
Try experimenting with the prompts to get different types of output such as:
a. High-level language
b. A clear and concise summary
c. Simple language
d. Heavy use of academic forms
e. Incorporating some of the structures that have been covered in class
2. In your groups, discuss which version of the précis is best based on what has been
covered in class. Consider:
a. Have all the main points been identified?
b. How close is each version to the original text? Is there enough paraphrasing?
c. Is each version intelligible? Does the text actually make sense?
d. Which register is more appropriate?
3. Include some observations on each of the versions that have been generated.
a. This can be done either by comments or adding bullet lists at the end of the
generated text.

Submit your annotated copies of the generated texts.

Task 2
In this task, you will analyse the language used in four texts.

The texts can be found here:

Text 1 Hussain AA, Bouachir O, Al-Turjman F, Aloqaily M. AI Techniques for COVID-19. IEEE
Access. 2020 Jul 8;8:128776-128795. doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3007939. PMID:
34976554; PMCID: PMC8545328.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34976554/

Text 2 Warschauer M. (1996) "Computer Assisted Language Learning: an Introduction".

In Fotos S. (ed.) Multimedia language teaching, Tokyo: Logos International: 3-20.
http://www.ict4lt.org/en/warschauer.htm

Text 3 Adichie, C. A. (n.d.). Beware of Feminism Lite. TED Ideas.

https://ideas.ted.com/beware-of-feminism-lite/

Text 4 Wilde, O. (n.d). Art and the Handicraftsman.

https://www.wilde-online.info/art-and-the-handicraftsman.html
The process to complete this task is as follows

1 Individually Each person in the group reads one of the texts.

Analyse the language used:
 What genre is the text? What features of the text lead you
to believe this?
 What interesting grammatical structures and vocabulary
have been included?
o Which items are C2?
 Does the author follow the advice that your group included
in the infographic from Portfolio 1 Task 2?
W In groups Share your observations about the texts, discussing the positives
and negatives of each as a piece of academic writing (i.e., Does it
follow the conventions that we have looked at in class?)
3 In groups Write a short summary of your discussion. Include:
 What advice from the infographic(s) has been followed by
each author
 What advice from the infographic(s) hasn’t been followed
by each author
 Which text you think best meets the requirements of the
course and why
This is not an activity to assess your writing but rather one that
encourages you to reflect on the content of the course so far. As
such, this summary can be submitted in note form/bullets (but
make sure that your teacher can still understand it).

Submit your written summaries.

Submission

The Portfolio will be submitted via a task on your class Moodle page.

One person in your group needs to submit the whole Portfolio in Word or PDF format.

Your group’s portfolio needs to have a cover page which includes the following information:

 Full names of all group members

 Class/teacher
 Date

After the cover page, there should be two things in your portfolio:

 Three AI-generated summaries that have been analysed and commented on.
 A written summary of your group discussion for Task 2.

Note that the whole group will receive the same mark for the Portfolio, so it’s in
your interest to ensure that communication remains open and that all group
members participate equally.
 Task 1 text: Going head-to-head: taking lecture notes by hand or
on your laptop
The use of laptops in classrooms is controversial. Many professors believe that computers (and
the Internet) serve as distractions, detracting from class discussion and student learning (e.g.,
Yamamoto, 2007). Conversely, students often self-report a belief that laptops in class are
beneficial (e.g., Barak, Lipson, & Lerman, 2006; Mitra & Steffensmeier, 2000; Skolnick & Puzo,
2008). Even when students admit that laptops are a distraction, they believe the benefits
outweigh the costs (Kay & Lauricella, 2011). Empirical research tends to support the
professors’ view, finding that students using laptops are not on task during lectures (Kay &
Lauricella, 2011; Kraushaar & Novak, 2010; Skolnick & Puzo, 2008; Sovern, 2013), show
decreased academic performance (Fried, 2008; Grace-Martin & Gay, 2001; Kraushaar & Novak,
2010), and are actually less satisfied with their education than their peers who do not use
laptops in class (Wurst, Smarkola, & Gaffney, 2008).

Experimental tests of immediate retention of class material have also found that Internet
browsing impairs performance (Hembrooke & Gay, 2003). However, even when distractions
are controlled for, laptop use might impair performance by affecting the manner and quality of
in-class note taking. There is a substantial literature on the general effectiveness of note taking
in educational settings, but it mostly predates laptop use in classrooms. Prior research has
focused on two ways in which note taking can affect learning: encoding and external storage
(see DiVesta & Gray, 1972; Kiewra, 1989). The encoding hypothesis suggests that the
processing that occurs during the act of note taking improves learning and retention. The
external-storage hypothesis touts the benefits of the ability to review material (even from
notes taken by someone else). These two theories are not incompatible; students who both
take and review their notes (as most do) likely profit from both approaches (Kiewra, 1985).
This may be a result of moderating factors (Kobayashi, 2005), potentially including one’s note-
taking strategy. Note taking can be generative (e.g., summarizing, paraphrasing, concept
mapping) or nongenerative (i.e., verbatim copying). Verbatim note taking has generally been
seen to indicate relatively shallow cognitive processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Kiewra, 1985;
Van Meter, Yokoi, & Pressley, 1994). The more deeply information is processed during note
taking, the greater the encoding benefits (DiVesta & Gray, 1973; Kiewra, 1985). Studies have
shown both correlationally (Aiken et al., 1975; Slotte & Lonka, 1999) and experimentally
(Bretzing & Kulhavy, 1979; Igo, Bruning, & McCrudden, 2005) that verbatim note taking
predicts poorer performance than nonverbatim note taking, especially on integrative and
conceptual items. Laptop use facilitates verbatim transcription of lecture content because
most students can type significantly faster than they can write (Brown, 1988). Thus, typing may
impair the encoding benefits seen in past notetaking studies. However, the ability to transcribe
might improve external-storage benefits.

Our study investigated whether taking notes on a laptop versus writing longhand affects
academic performance, and to explore the potential mechanism of verbatim overlap as a
proxy for depth of processing. On multiple college campuses, using both immediate and
delayed testing across several content areas, we found that participants using laptops were
more inclined to take verbatim notes than participants who wrote longhand, thus hurting
learning. Moreover, we found that this pattern of results was resistant to a simple verbal
intervention: Telling students not to take notes verbatim did not prevent this deleterious
behavior. One might think that the detriments to encoding would be partially offset by the fact
that verbatim transcription would leave a more complete record for external storage, which
would allow for better studying from those notes. However, we found the opposite—even
when allowed to review notes after a week’s delay, participants who had taken notes with
laptops performed worse on tests of both factual content and conceptual understanding,
relative to participants who had taken notes longhand. The studies we report here show that
laptop use can negatively affect performance on educational assessments, even—or perhaps
especially—when the computer is used for its intended function of easier note taking.

Although more notes are beneficial, at least to a point, if the notes are taken indiscriminately
or by mindlessly transcribing content, as is more likely the case on a laptop than when notes
are taken longhand, the benefit disappears. Indeed, synthesizing and summarizing content
rather than verbatim transcription can serve as a desirable difficulty toward improved
educational outcomes (e.g., Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, & Vaughan, 2011; Richland,
Bjork, Finley, & Linn, 2005). For that reason, laptop use in classrooms should be viewed with a
healthy dose of caution; despite their growing popularity, laptops may be doing more harm in
classrooms than good.

Adapted from: Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of
Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159–1168.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524581