Abstract

A very common accommodation made for students with special needs is a note-taker. In higher education, the note-taker is often a peer who hand writes lecture notes. If a student wants to find references to a certain topic within the notes, he/she must search through the pages manually. Additionally, if the lecture was also separately audio recorded, a student must either re-listen to the whole lecture or manually try to search for the portion of interest to him/her. With these concerns, the authors sought to find a high-tech, low-cost solution that would academically empower special needs students. In late 2008, the Livescribe Smartpen was released for $US150. It is roughly the same size as a normal pen, but is capable of recording audio while simultaneously digitizing student handwriting written on special paper. Through a USB connection, the files are uploaded. The electronic notes retain their original format (i.e. cursive or printed handwriting), but are searchable. Besides being able to point to a place in the text and hear the corresponding audio to help fill in gaps in the notes, students can also search for words (i.e. key vocabulary for an upcoming exam). Thus, the authors chose to examine the accuracy of the search results as the first in a series of related research inquiries. The researchers asked volunteer participants at a technology conference to handwrite a paragraph using the Smartpen. Within that paragraph, 10 words were targeted for a search from each participant’s sample. This paper presents the resulting data analysis. Second, a case study was conducted with an university student who require peer note-takers. Qualitative data, gained through surveys and interviews, is also reported.