Yes, I used to do Typewell transcription. I was in the first batch of transcribers when CSUN adopted it.
The way it works that is different from RTCs is that the short cuts are based on spelling, not on pronunciation. Transcribers learn a special Word-like program that turns short abbreviations into longer words, sort of like Braille. We were drilled on a certain number (100 I think?) of the most common words we were likely to encounter, and then we learned rules for how to abbreviate any other word. So you still have to type, but in essence the system ups your typing speed enormously.
Transcribers use the program on a laptop and set up like a RTC with a little stand and a chair. The difference is the student can be issued a laptop that interfaces wirelessly with the transcriber's, so they do not have to sit together, which is nice when it's a big classroom, the student prefers to sit in the back, and the transcriber has to sit up front to hear the teacher.
When we started transcribing, we did not do it in this real-time way but there were plans to start. We took our files, edited them, and sent them to NCOD where they were put in the students' mailboxes. This meant that there was a very wide range of transcription types available. We were always told to go for "meaning-for-meaning" transcription as it is not "word-for-word." This meant that in some cases the transcriptions were more like someone taking notes on the teacher's lecture, especially if the transcriber didn't type super quickly. This was considered acceptable because the users of the system were using interpreters or hearing/lipreading, so detailed notes were fine as they were getting the content in class.
I normally type about 80-90 words per minute so with this system I was generally able to do a complete word-for-word transcription except for fast overlapping conversations. I would have done well with the wireless hookup but the slowest typists we had, who had to summarize everything, probably wouldn't. Like I said this was a while ago so things may have changed, and also I don't know how your school uses the system, so maybe you'll get almost word-for-word transcriptions or it might be more paraphrased and summarized.
