“When I saw my peers annotating”

Abstract

Purpose Social annotation (SA) is a genre of learning technology that enables the annotation of digital resources for information sharing, social interaction and knowledge production. This study aims to examine the perceived value of SA as contributing to learning in multiple undergraduate courses. Design/methodology/approach In total, 59 students in 3 upper-level undergraduate courses at a Canadian university participated in SA-enabled learning activities during the winter 2019 semester. A survey was administered to measure how SA contributed to students’ perceptions of learning and sense of community. Findings A majority of students reported that SA supported their learning despite differences in course subject, how SA was incorporated and encouraged and how widely SA was used during course activities. While findings of the perceived value of SA as contributing to the course community were mixed, students reported that peer annotations aided comprehension of course content, confirmation of ideas and engagement with diverse perspectives. Research limitations/implications Studies about the relationships among SA, learning and student perception should continue to engage learners from multiple courses and from multiple disciplines, with indicators of perception measured using reliable instrumentation. Practical implications Researchers and faculty should carefully consider how the technical, instructional and social aspects of SA may be used to enable course-specific, personal and peer-supported learning. Originality/value This study found a greater variance in how undergraduate students perceived SA as contributing to the course community. Most students also perceived their own and peer annotations as productively contributing to learning. This study offers a more complete view of social factors that affect how SA is perceived by undergraduate students.

Digital humanities and digital social reading

“…With research focusing on literacy we move from a literary to an educational viewpoint. Literacy-oriented research considers DSR mostly as a tool for education in reading, writing, literature, and personal development, including uses of DSR in library and classroom environments (Blyth 2014;Kalir et al 2020). Indeed, some of the earliest research came from digital library studies.…”

Reading and connecting: using social annotation in online classes

“…Table 1 presents a summary of all studies. Before presenting the categories, we stress that both successes and challenges were reported across studies and any attempts to incorporate social annotation need to consider the context (Kalir et al , 2020). In this section, we spotlight learning activity designs to illuminate possibilities of social annotation in education.…”

“…In another study, undergraduate students reported difficulty in making distinct annotations, while some peer annotations might even impede their understanding (Thoms and Poole, 2017). Kalir et al (2020) also revealed that undergraduate students perceived divergent social qualities and benefits of social annotation, for instance, some students perceived it as useful for peer interaction but less valuable for the creation of course community. In Chen et al (2020), 5th graders felt being distracted by the competition mechanism in a gamified annotation activity given these challenges, it is important to create a feedback loop and a strategy to evaluate the use of social annotation in a particular context.…”

“…In comparison with paper-based annotation, Web annotation harnesses simultaneous access to a shared document and creates a layer of interactivity on any Web document (W3C Web Annotation Working Group, 2016). In education, Web annotation is broadly used to support social reading, group sensemaking, knowledge construction and community building (Chen, 2019; Kalir et al , 2020; Marshall, 1997; Plevinski et al , 2017). In the following sections, we first describe methods and key findings.…”

A Scaffolding Framework for Social Annotation in Online Classes

“…Web annotation is a genre of information technology that allows a user to annotate information in a shared document and anchor a discussion to the annotated information. When it is used socially in online classes, web annotation can support social reading, group sensemaking, knowledge construction, and community building (Chen, 2019;Kalir et al, 2020, Zhu et.al, 2020.…”