Chapter Intro

Please see Chapter 3 for recommendations for creating successful group/team interactions.

Text-based Annotation

Prep Ahead

Select your readings and make sure that they are available in a digital format (a PDF, a web page)

Ingredients

• Digital readings
• Learning goal(s)
• Prompts/expectations for students
• A social annotation tool
• Assessment and/or feedback strategy

Step by Step Instructions

1. 1. Identify your learning goal. Do you want students to engage with the readings in order to:
      • Close reading: Students annotate course readings
      • Breadth/critical reading: Students annotate readings on the web
      • Deepening understanding: Students add context, multimedia to readings
      • Interaction: As a replacement for/addition to discussions
      • Drawing connections in research: Students annotate sources to connect to other contexts and sources
      • Translation: Providing translations for difficult/colloquial language texts
      • Critique: Layering critique on media, reporting
   2. Create a prompt/instructions for the activity. Sample prompt:

Digital annotation and discussion of key texts should connect to key ideas in the texts, show your engagement with those ideas, as well as connections to your personal experience. Digital annotations can and should also include engagement with peers’ annotations and questions that you have about the text – this is a chance for you to learn from one another. You might:

1. • • Define words that you don’t know.
     • Ask questions.
     • Answer questions.
     • Link to similar articles, or things that passages remind you of from other courses or your personal experiences.
     • Provide analysis.

1. 3. Choose a social annotation tool. Middlebury licenses 2 social annotation tools: Hypothes.is, and Perusall. They both provide features for the core function of annotating a reading, and they are both available to use from within Canvas. Some differences:
      • Hypothes.is:
        • Allows annotations on websites, and readings in Canvas
        • Annotations can be private, shared to a group, or public.
        • Integration with SpeedGrader
        • Currently doing a pilot at Midd

      You can find out more about Hypothes.is on the DLINQ Toolkit Hypothes.is page, including instructions for how to use it.

      • Perusall:
        • Annotation tool for uploaded documents or purchased textbooks
 (this option is attractive for courses that depend on a textbook, such as in the sciences)
        • Also supports video annotation
        • Integrated with Canvas

      You can find out more about Perusall on the DLINQ Toolkit Perusall page, including instructions for how to use it.

   4. Give feedback/assess
      • Given that this will likely be a new activity for students, after your first annotation activity, we suggest that you provide brief, formative feedback to your students (either individually, or as a whole class) as to how the annotations and discussions met your expectations, and what you might like to see done differently the next time.
      • We also strongly encourage you to model the types of annotations and interactions you would like to see by participating in the activity yourself. That does not mean responding to every students’ annotation, but adding a handful of annotations and comments will show your students what you’re looking for – and, your participation is a great opportunity to integrate instructor presence into course (they can see that you are there and engaging with them and their ideas).
      • Any graded assessment of the activity should tie closely back to your learning goals and specific instructions. If your learning goals are for students to critique the text, and for students to interact with one another, then your assessment should align with those criteria.

Additional Resources

• Slides from Social Annotation for Learning workshop
• Slides from Hypothes.is workshop
• Slides from Perusall workshop

Video-based Annotation

Prep Ahead

Determine what type of video content students will be working with and/or creating, and what platform you plan to use for sharing and annotation.

Ingredients

• Learning goal(s)
• Videos
• Prompts/expectations for students
• A video annotation tool
• Assessment and/or feedback strategy

Step by Step Instructions

1. 1. Identify your learning goal. Do you want students to engage with the video(s) in order to:
      • Close analysis: Students annotate course videos
      • Breadth/critical analysis: Students annotate videos of their choice related to the learning topic
      • Deepening understanding: Students add context, multimedia to videos
      • Interaction: As a means of fostering discussion among students
      • Drawing connections in research: Students annotate videos to connect to other contexts and sources
      • Translation: Providing translations for difficult/colloquial language videos
      • Critique: Layering critique on media, reporting
      • Peer Feedback: Providing feedback to peers on presentations and/or skill practice

2. 2. Create a prompt/instructions for the activity. Sample prompt:

Digital annotation and discussion of key ideas in the video should connect to key ideas in the course or module, show your engagement with those ideas, as well as connections to your personal experience. Digital annotations can and should also include engagement with peers’ annotations and questions that you have about the video – this is a chance for you to learn from one another. You might:

• • • Define words that you don’t know.
    • Ask questions.
    • Answer questions.
    • Link to similar articles or media, or things that passages remind you of from other courses or your personal experiences.
    • Provide analysis.
    • Provide feedback on skills practiced in the video.

3. 3. Choose a video annotation tool.
   • • Middlebury licenses GoReact, which is available both as a standalone web tool, and as an external app integrated with Canvas. GoReact allows instructors and students to record or upload their own videos, either individually or in small groups of up to nine people.
     • Video assignments can be individual in nature, where only the instructor will be able to add or view annotations, or social in nature, where the instuctor can open annotation and viewing to select class members or to the entire class. Annotations can be multi-modal, and users can create and share annotation marker sets as well.
     • Perusall (described in the Text-based Annotation recipe) also offers video annotation, although it is not as robust or flexible (or easy to use) as GoReact. Another free option for video annotation is VideoAnt, which is managed by the University of Minnesota.

1. 4. Give feedback/assess.
   • • Given that this will likely be a new activity for students, after your first annotation activity, we suggest that you provide brief, formative feedback to your students (either individually, or as a whole class) as to how the annotations and discussions met your expectations, and what you might like to see done differently the next time.
     • We also strongly encourage you to model the types of annotations and interactions you would like to see by participating in the activity yourself. That does not mean responding to every students’ annotation, but adding a handful of annotations and comments will show your students what you’re looking for – and, your participation is a great opportunity to integrate instructor presence into the course (they can see that you are there and engaging with them and their ideas).
     • Any graded assessment of the activity should tie closely back to your learning goals and specific instructions. If your learning goals are for students to critique the video, and for students to interact with one another, then your assessment should align with those criteria.

Additional Resources

• GoReact Instructor Guide
• Investigating the Social Interactions of Beginning Teachers Using a Video Annotation Tool, by Joshua Ellis, Justin McFadden, Tasneem Anwar, and Gillian Roehrig.

Student-Led Threaded Discussions

Prep Ahead

To prepare for this assignment faculty should consider how they want to structure their student-led discussions. In particular, they should consider:

• What will be the role of the student facilitator?
• How frequently will the student-led discussions occur?
• How can you adequately convey your expectations to ensure that the discussion reflects the goals that you wish to see demonstrated?
• Will you assess the work of the facilitator and the participants? If so, how?

Once you have determined this structure, it is important to write up an initial description of this assignment plan so that students are aware of all of the expectations and guidelines that they will need to adhere to.

Ingredients

• Guidelines & expectations for students
• Learning goals being addressed
• Assessment and feedback strategy
• Discussion forum tool

Step by Step Instructions

1. 1. Identify your learning goal. Do you want students to lead and respond to student lead discussions to:
      • Foster peer to peer learning?
      • More deeply examine and question core course concepts?
      • Analyze and process readings in a collaborative setting?
      • Develop reading prompts and facilitate discussion?

1. 2. Create instructions and guidelines for the assignment. You may be able to reuse this content if you assign a weekly student-led discussion forum. Sample prompt: Each week one student in the class has signed up to lead the class discussion on the weekly reading. As the discussion leader, it is your responsibility to formulate 2-3 reading prompt questions that you can share with the class at the beginning of the week. Throughout the week you will also be responsible for facilitating the discussion by connecting relevant observations and responses and generally “jumping in” whenever it seems like facilitation can help move the conversation along.

3. 3. Choose a Discussion Tool. Middlebury licenses two tools that can easily be used for discussion forum purposes: Canvas and Microsoft Teams. If you are already using one of the tools for your course, we would recommend you stick with that tool, to keep your course tech usage as streamlined as possible.
      • Learn more about Canvas and Microsoft Teams.

1. 4. Create the structure for the discussion(s) in your tool of choice. If you will have a pattern of discussions in your course, you may be able to duplicate the structure throughout the course so that your forums are all prepped and ready to go at the start of the semester. Both Canvas and Microsoft Teams allow you to control visibility so that the “prepped” forums are not visible to students until you want them to be.

1. 5. Give feedback/assess. Early in the semester, you should provide students with the ways in which you will assess both their facilitation and participation in the student-led forums (see Prep Ahead section above). Whatever your assessment strategy is, it should be aligned with the learning goals outlined in connection with the assignment. It can be very helpful to provide models and exemplars of past discussions to demonstrate to students what you are looking for in their work.

Additional Resources

• Student-led Facilitation Strategies in Online Discussions (PDF), by Evrim Baran and Ana-Paula Correia

• Student-led Online Discussions: A Feminist Praxis to Mitigate Digital Gender Inequality, by Alice Lai

Hatful of Quotes Discussions

Prep Ahead

You’ll want to decide what technology tool you want to use for this activity (e.g., Canvas discussions, Google Docs) and what quotes you will want students to respond to. You can pick quotes from course readings, if you want students to engage more deeply with the readings, or you can pick quotes from readings that have not been assigned, as a way to expose students to perspectives beyond the course readings. Consider how many students are in your class as you think about how many quotes you’ll need. For example, if your class has 50 students and you’d like 5 students to respond to each quote, you’ll need 10 quotes.

Ingredients

• Learning goals for the activity
• Quotes from course readings or other readings/resources
• An online discussion space

Step by Step Instructions

1. 1. Identify your learning goal(s). Some examples:
      • Foster peer to peer learning
      • Give all students an opportunity to participate in discussion
      • Expose students to more perspectives and readings through the selected quotes

1. 2. Set up the activity. Set up the online space where students will be assigned the quotes. Here is an example of a Google Doc set up for a Hatful of Quotes activity. You could also set up small group discussions for each quote in Canvas.

3. 3. Add the quotes for the activity and assign groups of students to each quote. Add the quotes to your online space and include a link or reference to the source of each quote, in case a student wants to look for context or more information about the quote. Assign small groups of students to each quote by putting their names next to the quote assigned to them.

1. 4. Decide how you want to “call up” the quotes. How do you want students who are responding to quotes to share their perspectives with the full class? If you  are teaching a hybrid course and are offering live class sessions, that may be a good place to “call up” the quotes and for groups to synthesize their perspectives on their quotes. If the course is fully asynchronous, you might consider having a full class discussion forum where students can synthesize their responses.

1. 5. Give students clear instructions on how to participate. This is an unusual approach to discussion, so provide clear instructions to students on how they should participate. Express your learning goals to them and the importance of every student in the class sharing their perspective.

Additional Resources

• Discussion as a Way of Teaching by Stephen Brookfield

Peer Feedback

Prep Ahead

The key decision to make is what role(s) do you want peer feedback to play in your course?

Being able to provide useful, meaningful feedback to a peer is a valuable skill in and of itself, and some research suggests that the process of writing it is more useful to the person giving the feedback than the person receiving. Indeed taking on feedback and incorporating it into a revision is a separate skillset that also requires practice.

Deciding the role and purpose of feedback in your course will directly affect your course design and planning.  Is the feedback a piece of assessment at the end of a project or presentation?  This can be especially useful if the assignment is to produce something for a student audience.

Is the feedback going to be used in a revision process for producing a next draft?  If so, you’ll want to create sufficient time for students to review each other’s work, create feedback, take on that advice, and revise.

Determine the purpose and time available for review, feedback, and revision.  Think also about where and how you want students to give feedback, and be sure to specify the platform (e.g., google docs) if it matters.  Are they writing directly on a draft, or separately?  Is it about a complete draft, the assignment as a whole, or specific elements (comprehensibility or persuasiveness, for example)?  How will you see and evaluate the feedback?

Ingredients

• Guidelines, instructions, and expectations for students
• Learning goals being addressed
• Assessment strategy

Step by Step Instructions

1. 1. 1. Identify your learning goal. Customize the goals to fit your course as discussed above. Some examples:
         • Practice summarizing texts in ways that are neutral, accurate, and fair
         • Evaluate drafts as works in progress to recognize both strengths and areas for revision and expansion
         • Create feedback that is actionable and fits relevant timeframes
         • Revise work in light of feedback to create stronger drafts
      2. Create guidelines, instructions, and expectations for students.

Students benefit from a structured approach to creating feedback to peers, as many have not had opportunities to practice developing balanced, considered responses to works in progress. Make it explicit that they are to treat each other’s work both seriously and fairly, and that you are asking them to make substantive suggestions for revision (whatever that looks like for your course).

A generative writing process can take them through crafting feedback that will be descriptive, positive, forward looking, and actionable. It can also be submitted for assessment itself, and demonstrates both their efforts and thought process. For example, this sequence starts with neutral summary and builds towards concrete improvements:

Students respond to each of these prompts with at least a paragraph, up to a page for longer work:

• • • • • Neutrally describe/summarize the piece – what are the main takeaways, what arguments are presented, what evidence supports it, etc. You can tailor these for particular areas of focus.
        • Describe what is effective about the work. What is working well?
        • Describe what is less effective about the work. What is confusing, unpersuasive, etc.? It can be helpful to make clear to students when you want them to focus on larger issues like evidence, use of sources, and the chain of reasoning, rather than line edits or writing mechanics.
        • What changes can you suggest for the next draft? These need to be concrete, actionable suggestions that fit the timeline.

Students should then use their responses to these prompts to craft their descriptive, positive, forward looking, actionable feedback. Note to them that little to none of the “what is less effective” response will make its way into the final response, as that is to help them identify areas for change and brainstorm useful suggestions.

1. 1. 3. Create an assessment strategy.

Letting students know that strategy and how you will assess their efforts makes it clear that you take peer feedback seriously. Tailor your approach to your course and make clear that you value treating peer work seriously and fairly, and responding to it with substance.

Additional Resources

• Using Assessment to Improve Peer Review Feedback (OLC Innovate 2021)
  • Slides