Smart pens for worked examples – a new case-study

By Suzi Wells

There’s a new case study on our main site: worked examples using smart pens in biochemistry. As part of our e-pens pilot project, Gus Cameron in Biochemistry has been providing animated-PDFs with audio commentary for his students, showing how to work through questions.

The pens have proved easy to use and the materials well-received by students. It’s unfortunate that the PDFs produced are, because of their audio content, strictly-speaking not standards compliant. But they work fine in Adobe PDF viewer, which is freely available and standard for computers at Bristol. I’m not sure we’d recommend them to create a bank of re-usable learning materials but as a quick and easy way to create just-in-time materials, especially containing diagrams or notation, they seem very good.