When the user starts the E-Class application the tools initialize themselves in the format presented in figure 1. The Student Note Field tool provides students a text editor to save notes in a slide-by-slide format. The Presentation Viewer tool allows an instructor to present a slide based lecture to a class. The Attendance Roster tool allows instructors to see who is present in class and also allows all users to view is online at the given moment. The Chat tool gives all users the ability to communicate with whoever is online, although, when a lecture is being presented chat is moderated by instructor. The WhiteBoard tool gives users the ability to draw images and share visual representations with the rest of the class.

Since there are so many different tools included in the E-Class application each tool is available in it's own separate window. The utilization of separate windows allows the user to adjust what tools are present, resize each tool, as well as arrange the tools to his/her specifications. However to help the user prevent a cluttered workspace the application is configured with windows formatted as presented in the figure above. Although a user can easily configure a unique interface to their preference. This way a web browser could easily be integrated into the E-Class workspace and can allow other research applications to supplement the course. Figure 2 (below) shows a student who decides not to utilize the whiteboard or drawing toolbars. This allows him to have much more room for collaborating with classmates, taking notes, and viewing the current presentation.

The multitude of tools may lead many instructors to integrate one or two features of E-Class into their course but have little need for the others. To fulfill these needs the E-Class includes features that modify the user-interface to however the user finds preferable. The instructor and student start up screens have the same user-interface, however, the instructor has extra features to help administrate the class. These Instructor administrative features include the ability to moderate questions during a lecture, create lecture presentations, editing student layer permissions, and booting users from a lecture. An extra window for instructor controls only adds clutter to the work space so to have different features in each of the windows are more beneficial to an instructor.

Editor's Note: The figures shown above were done with Xcode Interface Builder which is an only mac-compatible implementation. As of now the E-Class does not have any specifications for languages or system compatibility. This is a very rough implementation of a graphical user interface, however, this provides a representation of the E-Class application.