Ahsan Nazir Sheikh
Master Thesis Student
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+49 (176) 62661858
My supervisor is Jonathan Diehl.
NoteCarrier
Student participation in the class plays a vital role in any lecture. Without student involvement the lecture loses its meaning and importance. A main reason for reduced participation in classes is the communication gap between students and lecturers. Many students feel hesitant when communicating directly in a lecture and prefer not to participate. This can negatively impact their studies.
In this thesis a proposed application NoteCarrier provides a communication channel between the lecturer and the student. This not only increases student interaction but also helps lecturers improve their techniques and deliver successful lectures by using smart devices.
The application evolved into its current state with the continuous user’s feedback. The initial concept of NoteCarrier application was presented to the students in form of storyboards, to lighten the need of software in real scenarios. After the story- board’s evaluation, paper prototype was created to illustrate the possible features and interaction techniques to its potential users. These prototypes were assessed with group of students to extract the right balance between the user needs and features provided by the application.
Based on evaluation result, application’s software prototype was implemented for Mac OS and Apple IOS, providing features for student’s active participation and support for other features like taking notes, downloading slides, and synchronized off-line slide view. Software prototype is evaluated in actual class session at University of Bonn. Questionnaire and post interviews were conducted at the end of the session to gather user’s feedback.
NoteCarrier is composed of three sub applications, a cocoa based application server which acts as an interface between client devices and Keynote. Two IOS based applications to facilitate students and assist lecturers during class. Students and lecturers exhibited their high interest in application current features and they also endorse that integration of such system will definitely have positive impact on their learning process.
Publications
- Ahsan Nazir. NoteCarrier: A Nomadic Application for Bi-Directional Class-Room Communication.. Master's Thesis, Bonn University,September 2012.
