The exact details of the lectures are captured on audio, video and in writing. The goal of Classroom 2000 is to use existing technology to aid students and instructors in doing their normal routine, said Dr. Gregory Abowd, assistant professor, CoC. Abowd and Ph.D. student Jason Brotherton led the research efforts of the project. Students bury their heads in notebooks, trying to record every word of the lecture, afraid they may miss something if they interact with the instructor. Now classrooms can be outfitted with an electronic whiteboard, audio equipment and video equipment to capture the classroom experience, allowing instructors and students to focus more on discussion and interaction and less on dictation. The system developed for Classroom 2000 is called Zen-star.
Instructors write on a blank electronic whiteboard or on top of prepared slides.
The Classroom 2000 system captures the written notes from the whiteboard by using a computer program. Electronic annotations, audio, video and even Web browser activity, are all automatically recorded and time stamped. In some classes, the lecturer's speech has been automatically transcribed using commercial speech transcription technology. Experiments have also been conducted in which student notes are taken electronically with the aid of pen-based technology at the student's desk. A time line provides an index to the audio, video, slides, and visited Web pages.