AnnotatED Workshop on Social Annotation: Instructor Presence and Making Sense of Science

To kick off this year’s annual OLC Innovate conference, Hypothesis joined with the Online Learning Consortium and AnnotatED communities to hold a free social annotation workshop on Friday 12 March 2021 with two exciting parts: a collaborative annotation session with OLC Innovate educators focused on topics from their presentations, and a special episode of Liquid Margins, “Making Sense of Science With Social Annotation,” where Hypothesis scholar in residence Remi Kalir moderated a conversation with educators from North Carolina State University and Science in the Classroom, an AAAS program that helps students learn to read real-world scientific literature.

Annotate the video transcript while you watch, view the workshop slide deck, and scroll down to see shared resources from the webinar chat.

Part 1: Social Annotation and Instructor Presence

The workshop started with a quick orientation to collaborative annotation for social reading: What is it, and how are people using it to enrich online learning? Then we shifted to a hands-on activity to explore, discuss, and augment readings selected by our special guest educators from Metropolitan State University of Denver: Rebecca Cottrell, Ann Obermann, Adjoa Robinson, and Lee Scriggins from the Department of Social Work, and Meredith Jeffers from the Department of Modern Languages. We practiced reading together to see firsthand how social annotation can build understanding, connections, and community, focused on topics related to our panelists’ OLC Innovate presentation on connecting with students through intentional instructor presence. Our conversation was anchored in text — literally — and spread out to engage other texts, ideas, and people beyond the workshop itself.

Part 2: Liquid Margins: Making Sense of Science With Social Annotation

The second part of the workshop combined with a special edition of Liquid Margins, the show where we gather to talk about collaborative annotation, social learning, and other ways we make knowledge together. We joined episode 20, “Making Sense of Science With Social Annotation,” to meet up with educators using social annotation to help students read, interpret, and comment on scientific texts — and share their “findings” with each other. Hypothesis scholar in residence Remi Kalir moderated a conversation with Erin McKenney, Assistant Professor of Applied Ecology, and Carlos Goller, Associate Teaching Professor, both from North Carolina State University; and Melissa McCartney, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at Florida International University and the Director of Research at Science in the Classroom.

Workshop Links

• Workshop resources
• See what we annotated during the workshop and join in the annotation yourself:
  • Langston Hughes’ poem “Theme for English B”
  • Effectively Communicating With Your Online Students
• Community resources
  • Revising the “Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory” (MARSI) and Testing for Factorial Invariance, Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 2018
  • Annotated Primary Literature: A Professional Development Opportunity in Science Communication for Graduate Students and Postdocs
  • Annotated primary scientific literature: A pedagogical tool for undergraduate courses
  • 24 thoughts on “A note taking problem and a proposed solution”
  • Chemmatters: The Flint Water Crisis: What’s Really Going On?
  • Approaching Environmental Health Disparities and Green Spaces: An Ecosystem Services Perspective
  • The Jigsaw Method Teaching Strategy
  • 4 Things You Don’t Know About the Jigsaw Method
  • Annotated primary scientific literature: A pedagogical tool for undergraduate courses
  • Following People on Hypothesis
• Hypothesis resources
  • Hypothesis YouTube Channel
  • Hypothesis 101 Archives
  • Scholarship About Hypothesis
  • Student Resource Guide
  • Enabling Social Learning for Large Classes: Annotating in Sections
  • Social Annotation Research With Hypothesis
  • Indiana University Partners with Hypothesis to Pilot Collaborative Annotation
  • Back to School with Annotation: 10 Ways to Annotate with Students

About the Workshop

This AnnotatED workshop continued our exploration of how we can all participate differently at professional conferences. Gathering face-to-face and virtually at professional events is a powerful way to share knowledge and make connections. But so often the benefits of these events are limited to the moment: We experience the keynoters and presenters, we converse at our table and in the hallway, we might take notes and take ideas back home, but we usually don’t have the opportunity to activate common scholarly practices together with all our fellow attendees and others who might not be there at the same place and time. By anchoring conference discussion in social reading, we can come together around a valuable shared experience and extend engagement beyond the event itself, with people who attend live and folks who tune in at other times.

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AnnotatED at OLC

This year’s workshop continued the already rich history of interaction in these communities. In 2019 and 2020, Hypothesis and AnnotatED collaborated with OLC on multiple events:

Similar AnnotatED workshops were conducted at OLC Innovate 2020, with keynoters Maha Bali and Martin Weller, and at OLC Accelerate 2020, with keynoter Flower Darby, incorporating social reading on texts selected by these special guests to extend and augment their keynote sessions, and broadcasting flashtalks from AnnotatED community members describing their experiences with social annotation in a variety of educational contexts.

As a part of OLC Live! during OLC Accelerate 2019, Hypothesis and AnnotatED joined OLC and volunteers from dozens of institutions to hold a series of virtual events, including the Online International Summit, a design battle, a virtual escape room, a virtual speed networking lounge on annotation, and a salon on annotation with UC Colorado Denver’s Remi Kalir. We’re working with OLC now to distill outcomes from the rich discussions about open education during the Summit, which involved educators from every region of the world.

During OLC Innovate 2019 in Denver, Hypothesis had OLC’s support to hold an AnnotatED Summit that brought together educators and technologists — face-to-face and virtually — to share their experiences with annotation and participate in hands-on activities to incorporate annotation into teaching and learning practices. The highlight of the event was the mini-keynote from UC Colorado Denver’s Manuel Espinoza on his work with students to incorporate education as a basic human right in the Colorado state constitution.

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