Teacher instructions: Copy and paste these instructions into your own course to use with your students. Be sure to review the instructions before posting in your courses. You may want to make adjustments depending on how you plan to assess annotations or due to your specific discipline and/or the structure of your lecture.

Instructions for students

Purpose: Let’s collaborate on our class lectures by adding annotations to the documents. This will allow us to pool resources, and it will help me identify what topics we should spend more or less time on in class. You can review a quick-start guide for how to add annotations.

Instructions: As you review the lecture before and after class, add at least 2-3 annotations. Here’s some guidance for what you might include in your annotations:

• Ask a question about something that’s unclear or confusing to you
• Paraphrase a concept or a topic in your own words (this can help me understand how you’re interpreting the question)
• Connect lecture topics to specific examples or references in the reading (include author & page numbers if possible)
• Add a link, image or video to your annotation that you think supplements the material well and could help a classmate better understand a topic (review instructions on how to add images, links or videos to annotations)
• Comment on a topic or question that’s concerning to you and explain why
• Reply to a classmate with an additive annotation (add to the conversation by answering their question or extending their response). Here are some ideas on how to start an additive response to a classmate:
  • What did you mean by …
  • Did you consider …/ You might consider …
  • I think you should …
  • It made me think …

Important notes about annotating: 

• Make sure you hit “post” after you complete your annotation, or else your annotation will not be saved.
• Make sure it says “post to [this class]” and not “post to only me,” or else I won’t be able to review your annotations.
• If someone replies to your annotation, you will not receive a notification. Check back periodically to continue the conversation!