1. The Fall 1996 CS 6751 web page is organized and useful. One of its benefits is that it presents most of the important course-related information on the first page. This allows the user to browse through this information without waiting for other pages to load. Another good point about this web site is that it contains summary information at the top of the first page along with hyperlinks to the other main sections of interest. This index helps the user quickly retrieve the information they are looking for. The content of the page is also well-organized and beneficial to the user. The templates for project assignments and the lists of group members with email addresses are very useful. Additionally, the fact that no homework assignments were given must have been a great relief to the students.

   The use of tables helps organize the information, but empty cells in the table distract users from the information that is present. Also, the simple ball icon for class notes and review links does not represent its associated information. The search capability on the class notes is useful when (if?) it works, but would be more effective if it were incorporated into the first web page instead of having its own separate page.

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2. This interface uses three frames to present class notes. The best feature of this interface is the ability to see thumbnails of each slide before choosing which one to view. Since these thumbnails are presented in a separate frame, the user can scroll through all of the slides while viewing one particular slide in another frame. This ability allows users to relate different portions of the notes together by matching contents of multiple frames.

   The major drawback to using the three-frames approach is that the exact presentation of the material can not be guaranteed. After resizing the frames so that all of the information shows up, the user can benefit from the thumbnails of other slides. However, as soon as the user clicks on another slide, not only are the resized frames replaced by the original setup, but the scrolling frame with the thumbnails is not centered on the new slide. The only way to keep the information presented correctly is to make the browser window extremely large, which still may not be enough on some machines. Another drawback to this interface is the unclear presentation in the left-most frame. This frame tries to give the user information about keywords in each slide and audio tracks associated with each slide. However, this information is sparse and not easily understood. The links to the audio tracks are represented by times that don't always relate well to the slides. The keywords section of this frame is blank on most of the slides. This frame seems to be taking up too much space for too little information.

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3. The single page presentation of class notes seems more useful and effective than the three-framed approach. This interface, like the Fall 1996 CS 6751 web page, allows the user to scroll through all of the information without having to wait for multiple web pages to load. In addition, the timeline of when each slide was visible works extremely well when navigating through the slides. Since no new pages have to load, the transition from one slide to the next is quick and almost transparent. The users also have the ability to click on portions of text to hear the audio track at the moment that text was written. Though this is not intuitive, it is useful. The indications of writing in the audio timeline also help the user to relate the slides to the spoken content. In addition to this correlation between audio and slides, the user is able to view and print a postscript version of each slide for future review.

   One improvement to this interface would be to allow the user to view a postscript version of all the slides. This would allow printing of the entire lecture's notes without having to click and load numerous separate postscript files. The use of the line graph for a slide index is quick and intuitive. However, the lines and numbers do not represent any of the information contained in the associated slides. It would be more beneficial if the index could assist the user in deciding exactly which slide to view next. Another improvement to this interface would be to have the audio track interact with the web browser. Since the tool knows what writing happened at what points in the audio track, it could actually redraw each slide while the audio was playing. A visual indicator of where the audio track was compared to the slide would also help the user associated the spoken content with the material on the slide. For example, if there was a small white line that moved from left to right acroos the green/red audio timeline above each slide, that would give the user a more precise summary of what went on during that portion of the class.

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