Supporting note-taking in multimedia classes: PoliNotes

Nowadays, more and more university classes are given by means of slide-based presentations, possibly including multimedia contents. Advantages of such presentations are well-known-slide-based presentations permit teachers to prepare well-polished materials; moreover multimedia learning can enhance class effectiveness, facilitating retention and comprehension of concepts. Unfortunately, slide-based presentations also have shortcomings. In particular, taking notes becomes quite difficult and the result is often unsatisfactory. These issues particularly affect students who have problems in taking notes; for example, think of students with learning, motoric or sensorial impairments. The objective of our work is the design and development of a collection of software applications that allow convenient note-taking during slide-based classes. Such applications permit students to receive on their Tablet-PCs the slides presented by teachers, in real time. Students can edit objects contained in the slides, as well as add their own pen-based notes.