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Using Note-Taking Appliances for Student to Student

Collaboration

Prof. James A. LandayEECS Dept., UC Berkeley

July 8, 1999HCC Retreat

* original prototype developed in conjunction w/ FXPAL

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Observation

Students often leave class with different ideas about what was discussed & what was important. They also spend a lot of time copying information.

Can we improve this by encouraging collaboration?

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Vision

Take notes on note-taking appliances* & combine after class along with lecturer’s slides!

* electronic devices suited primarily for writing notes

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Vision

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How NotePals Works

Meet in the classroom Take free-form ink noteson PalmPilots or CrossPads

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How NotePals Works

Meet in the classroom Take free-form ink noteson PalmPilots or CrossPads

1 2

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How NotePals Works (cont.)

Dock PalmPilot/CrossPadwith PCs & Synchronize

Review notes on the Web

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Reviewing Notes on the Web

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Sharing Notes

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Graduate Note-taking Experience

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Graduate Note-taking Experience

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Graduate Note-taking Experience

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Advantages of our Approach

Lightweight infrastructure* no expensive hardware or special rooms

Lightweight interface* free-form ink lets students focus on class

Lightweight sharing* share load of taking notes* not limited to a single perspective

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Current Work

Performing a larger-scale classroom experiment* study how note-taking behavior changes (partners?)* results may depend on the style of the professor’s

slides, testing methodology, & privacy Creating a NotePals service w/ new UIs

* anyone on the web could start a NotePals “group” Developing note-taking clients for new devices

* Vadem Clio, PalmPC Making it easier to annotate other types of

objects or media w/ notes

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“Sharing notes using NotePals can help groups of students collaborate

more easily”

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