A category based concept for rapid development of ink-aware systems for computer-assisted education

Presentation centric lectures that draw on integration of multimedia content and new input devices gain increasing importance in the context of eLearning. The paper emphasizes the addition of digital ink, which is of increasing importance for public (schools, universities) and corporate (trainings, Webinars) teaching. We present a concept for flexibly developing custom ink-aware systems that support augmented presentations for a broad range of use cases and cover not only the core event but also pre- and post-event phases, addressing the needs of both lecturers and students. Our concept for ink-aware multimedia architectures is based on three main system components, which are in turn assisted by small signal processing units. The concept fosters development of clearly and consistently designed ink-aware applications. The paper emphasizes examples where digital ink is visualized atop image-based slides, but potential applications comprise a much broader range of underpinning application. To illustrate our concept and implementation, we present sample customizations i.e. realizations of all relevant component categories. We discuss evaluation results obtained from both interviews with lecturers as well as our experience with using and supporting customizations made by ourselves.