Case study · Higher education
Something big just happened in Lisbon
ShareTheBoard in the most notation-heavy courses a business school teaches, at Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics — in a room that was never configured the way it should have been.
Institution
Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics
Location
Lisbon, Portugal
Sector
Higher education — business & economics
Deployment
Classroom teaching, fully in-person
The context
A prestigious institution, a very ordinary problem
Católica Lisbon is consistently ranked among the top business schools in Europe. Its faculty cover Statistics, Maths, Macroeconomics and Finance — disciplines where the whiteboard is not a supplementary tool but the primary medium of instruction. Complex derivations and worked examples do not translate into a slide deck.
For a student in the third row or beyond, the board is often the difference between following a lecture and getting lost. Most of the students surveyed sat exactly there.
What the deployment set out to measure
The initiative ran in close collaboration with the university's Learning Innovation Team, which supported the rollout and opened access to classrooms and faculty. Both objectives were validated.
OBJECTIVE 1
Board content legibility
Ensure students in every part of the classroom can clearly follow what is written on the board, regardless of where they are seated.
OBJECTIVE 2
Board Memory for recall
Help students review lessons and access missed board content for studying, through automatic capture and delivery of board sessions.
The results
Every metric that matters moved in the same direction
92%
said the board became easier to see
Students seated from the third row or further — the majority of the room.
93%
said it helped them understand the lesson
Following the lecturer's reasoning instead of racing to copy it before it was erased.
76%
used Board Memory during class
Actively pausing mid-lecture to revisit content that had already been wiped off the board.
100%
want it in more lessons
Statistics, Maths & Calculus, Macroeconomics, Finance & Economics.
88%
used Board Memory after class
Students praised being able to study from saved board sessions long after the lecture ended.
71%
stayed more focused
They no longer felt pressure to copy everything from the board in real time. When students are copying, they are not learning.
The survey
How students actually answered
Did ShareTheBoard make it easier to see the board?
Students seated from the 3rd row or further. The first two rows are excluded — at that distance board visibility is not a real pain point.
- Easier to see the board92%
Did you use it to revisit erased content during class?
Live board replay, used mid-lecture without interrupting the professor.
- Used it during class76%
In their own words
“Being able to remember clarifications made in class later on that I missed on my notes.”
“I can access it at home and finish taking notes.”
“You could pay more attention to class instead of just copying.”
“The possibility to study with the notes from the board.”
Where students want it next — and what they would change
Subjects students asked for
100% said yes to expansion, and named the subjects unprompted.
- Statistics75%
- Maths / Calculus65%
- Macroeconomics45%
- All board lessons40%
- Finance / Economics30%
Improvement suggestions
Few students offered any suggestion at all — and the top two are already addressed by using a recurring session link.
- Easier access / Moodle45%
- No QR code scan25%
- More rooms20%
- Annotation tools12%
“My experience with ShareTheBoard has been that it is effortless for the professor to use, works seamlessly in the background, and makes whiteboard content easier for all students to access during and after class.”
Pedro Encarnação · Senior Affiliate Professor, Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics
Does your institution face similar challenges?
Católica Lisbon is one of several European universities where ShareTheBoard is actively being tested. If your students struggle with board legibility in large lecture halls, or your faculty teach notation-heavy subjects, we would be glad to show you what this looks like in practice.