Enhancing Learning with Live Notes: A Collaborative In-Class Note-Taking Tool

1. Livenotes: in-class collaborative note-taking John Canny Matthew Kam UC Berkeley CS HCC retreat 7/5/00

2. In-class collaborative note-taking • In lecture format classrooms, attention is the critical resource (Norman, Papert...). • Attention is best gained by interaction: with artifacts (the LOGO model) or with other students (the Stanford TVI model).

3. Approaches to improving learning in the lecture classroom • Active learning • One minute paper, based on lecturer question • Muddiest or clearest point in the lecture • Reading quizes... • Peer learning (Mazur) • Lecturer poses a question; students vote on answer • Students discuss with a few nearby students (2 to 4) • Students vote again; • Lecturer presents the solution: students get immediate feedback on their answers • Benefits from “polling” electronics

4. Livenotes • Students work in groups of 4; communicate silently via pen or keyboard chat. • Each group has one main note-taker; others add their own comments or questions to the transcript. • Students can mark up a group transcript, the lecturer’s notes, or a non-archived window. • One student per group works as facilitator or TA, posing questions to the others. • Fits well with peer learning (instant polling or feedback to the lecturer).

5. Using Livenotes remotely • The group transcripts include notes, plus student communications with each other. • Remote live participants should be equally engaged: the chat provides the social stimulus in Livenotes • Remote students can get easyquestions answered by locals, orlocals can ask questions in classon behalf of their remote peers

6. Livenotes theory • Note-taking is viewed as more than recording the lecture: • Some students take an active role in explaining to others • The lecture is related to other material that students know • Student hear multiple explanations of the material • Fits with social theories of learning: Bakhtin’s “dialogical” theory. Understanding as the resolution of multiple interpretations.

7. Initial feedback • 4 Students used Livenotes in a grad course in F99 on IBM laptops running Netmeeting on a wireless net. • Reactions: • Overlay touch screens were bad, everyone used keyboard chat. • Difficulty in listening and chatting simultaneously only in first lecture. • After that, attention level higher. “No chance of falling asleep”. • Many notes: two parallel threads, the note-taker and the group chat. Group chat periodically comes back to lecture content as new notes appear from the note-taker.

8. Next Step • Move to Vadem Clios with wireless: • Support both keyboard and pen note-taking. • Cheaper, lighter, batteries last all day. • Develop custom software based on feedback: • Support conversation threads. • Include hyperlinks (or hyper-ink). • Include timestamping to allow synchronization with MM transcript of the lecture. • In-class “lecture rewind” was proposed as a useful feature.

9. Future ideas • Lecturer feedback: • Polling student answers to questions • Student writing activity: pauses mean confusion or important point? • Analyzing student transcripts offline: looking for confusion or difficulty. • Guidelines vs. controls on the transcripts • Random chat OK? Or only on-topic notes? • Use a sample of transcripts for assessment?

10. Future ideas • Offline organization of notes: • Collaborative filtering to match background, language ability of learner with notes in corpus. • ZPD principles to retrieve notes slightly more advanced than the learner. • Full-text indexing and search. • Time-indexing and linkage to lecture recording.