The notebook metaphor is the pivotal artifact in the LiNC project's virtual school software. The Notebook is the artifact through access to all system functions is gained. Therefore it is a useful exercise to examine the effectiveness of the metaphor.
The Notebook does provide an artifact that is familiar to the academic environment. Additionally the Notebook affords the completion of work. These are positive attributes that a designer would want in the virtual school software regardless of the metaphor used by the system. However, there are some problematic aspects (see Metaphors: Pros and Cons of the Approach) of this metaphor within the context of a collaborative virtual school environment.
One problem is that the nature of the task domain is unique, a fact which poses problems for the metaphor. The typewriter is a relatively sound metaphor for the word processor because the task domain is very similar. The task domain of the traditional paper notebook is to allow one student to write his or her work on the pages contained therein. The task domain of the virtual school is much more ambitious. Its purpose is to allow multiple students at multiple locations to work on a single problem using networked computers. As standards of learning (Virginia Standards Of Learning, for example) develop in the information age, students are increasingly required to have knowledge of basic computer concepts. The range of required concepts includes such skills as the use of a word processor, spreadsheets, Internet tools, and even the use of a markup language such as HTML. It might make more sense, in terms of the directness of the metaphor to the task domain, to adopt a metaphor from the domain of familiar computer software.
The benefit of doing this could be two-fold. First the gulf between the task domain of the object of the metaphor and the software using the metaphor would be minimized. At least they would both be pieces of computer software with the only added dimension being the collaborative nature of the new task domain. Second, the many problems and inconsistencies between the virtual notebook and the paper notebook would be alleviated. For example if the metaphor was taken from the domain of computer software, the inconsistency of the login process would not be an issue.
The Notebook metaphor can be a workable metaphor to use, however, there are a number of problems that could be eliminated or minimized by adopting a composite metaphor from the suite of familiar applications described above.
The use of Login and Logout actions and their accompanying dialog boxes detracts from the metaphor of a group of students collaboratively working with a notebook. While some method needs to be in place to prevent the notebooks from being completely public items, computer system oriented Login / Logout may not be the optimal choice. One alternative is to use student logins for access to the school computer systems as login information for the virtual school software. Another alternative is to have the notebooks in a public place and have each of them protected by a password.
A bookcase in the virtual school environment is a metaphor we created to facilitate the storage and access of notebooks. We demonstrated its use in the "Teacher collaborative grading of Block and Plane Lab" scenario.
We presented two possibilities for page navigation within the notebook (three if you use both methods). One method utilizes page links, which affords easy access to distant portions of the notebook. This method has the downside of not following the notebook metaphor, which becomes even more obvious when you consider how to get back to where you started. The second method utilizes folded page corners as a visual cue to click the page corners to turn the pages in the notebook. This fits the notebook metaphor well, but easy access to distant pages like above is not available as students will have to search through non-tabbed pages one at a time.
We also presented four possibilities for access to web pages from the notebook. Two of the methods use external browsers to view web pages. The other two methods allow for viewing web pages on pages in the notebook.
For one of the methods that allows viewing of web pages within the notebook we created a bookmark to allow the user to return to their starting place.
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