What is social annotation?
Social annotation refers to collaborative reading and annotation. It is a collaborative learning activity, and an alternative to setting students reading activities to engage with on their own. Typically, documents are shared and each member of the group annotates the document with questions, comments and other ideas.
This technique can be used with:
- Text documents such as academic articles and case studies.
- Online sources such as web articles and blogs.
- Videos.
Engagement with primary texts/materials is a key aspect of the scholarship of higher education. Traditional seminar models use synchronous teaching as the basis for social collaborative activities where readings, sources and artefacts are discussed and manipulated. Flipped classroom approaches and many of the asynchronous teaching models often associated with fully-online or blended delivery models often utilise digital tools – such as online discussion boards – to facilitate similar social collaborative activities.
Pedagogies such as peer instruction (Mazur, 1997) have championed social collaborative annotation tools (Miller et al 2018) which provide a platform where students can write and share digital annotations on primary materials such as journal articles, book chapters, images and videos provided by the course instructor.
Jarrett also (2024) lists a number of case studies in which social annotation has been used.
Why use social annotation?
There are a number of benefits to using social annotation as either a formative class activity or a summative assessment task. Social annotation:
- Gives traceable evidence and accountability as each person’s annotations are visible – although anonymity is possible.
- Encourages interactions and thought processes, allowing students to raise questions and discuss issues.
- Can be a good alternative to a discussion forum.
- Develops discussion and critical thinking skills.
- Works across all disciplines requiring only appropriate material to be identified.
- Works in face-to-face, blended and fully-online environments.
- Can be set up as a synchronous or asynchronous activity to meet the environment.
Tools/Software option
There are several university tools which can be used for social annotation.
- The Interactive Documents and Interactive Video options within FeedbackFruits enables social annotation.
- Social annotation can be done using a simple shared Microsoft Word document or PDF to which annotations and comments can be added. This can be stored in a shared area such as a Microsoft Team.
- A collaborative cloud document can also be set up in Blackboard using the integrated Microsoft 365 tools.
Practical tips and considerations
There are some considerations which need to be addressed.
- Set clear objectives in the instructions and state the level of contribution expected.
- Include some key questions to get the activity started, e.g. What are the key concepts/arguments?
- Foster a supportive environment. This can be tutor-led, as it is important to monitor progress, but is better if it is student-led. Dialogue must be respectful as there may be many different perspectives.
- If the cohort is large, set this as a group activity so it does not become unwieldy.
- Set a reflective activity post annotation to enable the students to reflect on their personal contributions and the thoughts of others, has this changed their understanding or feelings about the topic.
Nguyen (2023) gives an insight into specific considerations related to the use of FeedbackFruits for social annotations.
Tips for accessibility and inclusion
- Give clear instructions for the task which allow for diverse opinions and ideas.
- Monitor closely and offer support and advice where needed.
- Ensure documents used for the task are accessible, for example ensure that you have used headings and alt text in Word documents and checked these using the in-built accessibility tool.
Further information
How-to guide
How-to-guide
Resources
References
- Jarrett, C. (2024). ’10 Things We Learned at AnnotatED 2024′. Hypothesis. [Online]. Available at: https://feedbackfruits.com/blog/how-to-engage-students-with-questions-6-best-strategies-for-social-annotation.
- Nguyen, N. (2023). ‘How to engage students with questions: 6 strategies for social annotation’. FeedbackFruits. [Online]. Available at: https://feedbackfruits.com/blog/how-to-engage-students-with-questions-6-best-strategies-for-social-annotation
- Mazur. E. (1997). Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual (1st ed.), Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River. Merrydew, A (2021). Reading literature: Critical pedagogies and Talis Elevate in online learning communities. Journal of Academic Development and Education (13). https://eprints.keele.ac.uk/10111/1/JADE%2013A%20-DOI.pdf
- Miller, K., Lukoff, B., King, G., & Mazur, E. (2018). Use of a social annotation platform for pre-class reading assignments in a flipped introductory physics class. Frontiers in Education, 3(8), 1–12. https://doiorg.ezphost.dur.ac.uk/10.3389/feduc.2018.00008
- Novak, E., Razzouk, R., Johnson, T.E. (2012) The educational use of social annotation tools in higher education: A literature review. The Internet and Higher Education, 15(1), Pp 39-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2011.09.002.
- Wood, J. (2022). ‘Social Annotation and Student Learning’. Making Digital History. [Online]. Available at: https://makingdigitalhistory.co.uk/2022/04/27/social-annotation-and-student-learning/.\Brown, M and Croft, B. 2020. Social Annotation and an Inclusive Praxis for Open Pedagogy in the College Classroom. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2020(1): 8, pp. 1–8. https://jime.open.ac.uk/articles/10.5334/jime.561/