This post was originally published on the ScholCommLab blog on 27 Aug 2019 by Alice Fleerackers, Juan Pablo Alperin, Esteban Morales, and Remi Kalir.

Comment, Reply, Repeat: Engaging Students with Social Annotation

Picture the last time you sat down to read an article for class. If your university experience was anything like most students’, chances are, you were alone.

While solitary reading has benefits and is a common aspect of learning in higher education, it may not be the most effective way to read. Research suggests that social annotation (SA) tools—which allow students to highlight and comment on digital course materials as they read—have impressive educational benefits. SA tools can help with students’ reading comprehension, peer review, motivation, attitudes toward technology, and much more.

But how does SA help students learn? To find out, we introduced the SA tool Hypothesis into three different undergraduate courses at Simon Fraser University: one in Gerontology, one in Publishing, and one in Women, Sexuality & Gender Studies. Together, students created more than 2,000 annotations atop more than 250 course readings over the course of a semester—all of which we collected and coded for evidence of learning. We also asked students about their experiences with the tool in an online survey at the end of the semester; 33 students across the courses completed our survey.

The outcomes of our research were thought-provoking and inspiring—and we’re eager to publish the full results soon. But for now, we’re sharing a sneak peek of the preliminary findings, right here on the ScholCommLab blog.

Read full post here.

About Hypothesis

Hypothesis is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development and spread of open, standards-based annotation technologies and practices, enabling anyone to annotate anywhere. Our mission is to help humans reason more effectively together through a shared, collaborative discussion layer over all knowledge. Hypothesis is based in San Francisco, CA, USA, with a worldwide team.

Hypothesis has developed its open source annotation software in collaboration with many partners and sponsors, including specific projects to augment groups and authentication capabilities with eLife, to enable annotation on EPUBs with NYU, the Readium Foundation, Evident Point, and EPUB.js, and many others. We thank our partners and community for working with us to advance standards-based, interoperable annotation for all.

Contacts
Media: Nate Angell, Director of Marketing
Annotation in Education: Jeremy Dean, Director of Education
Twitter: @hypothes_is