Hovering over a text with a pencil, adding a sticky note to a page, or making digital document highlights and comments, are natural and familiar practices. These findings link the established research areas of peer learning, formative assessment, and asynchronous learning, with an emerging educational technology. The data analysis in this study can serve as a practical exemplar for measurement of student annotation output, where baselines have yet to be established. The results in this study indicate that collaborative online annotation is largely preferred by students over a traditional reading assessment approach, that students regularly exceed annotation requirements indicated by an instructor, and that overall annotation quality increased as the students gained experience with the platforms. Perusall) for annotation by the same student population. However, the student viewpoint regarding collaborative online annotation platforms remains largely unexplored, as do comparisons between annotation and traditional reading assessment methods, and comparisons between the two leading platforms (Hypothes.is vs. The platforms provide a critical discussion forum for students and instructors that is directly content-linked, and can increase uptake of assigned reading.

Collaborative online annotation platforms are enabling this process in new ways, turning reading from a solitary into a collective activity. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United StatesĪnnotating a text while reading is commonplace and essentially as old as printed text itself.Most annotated bibliographies are a combination of the above, and include one or two sentences summarizing or describing content, in addition to one or two sentences providing an evaluation. An informative annotation is neutral and includes the author's: It contains no statements about the source's relevance to your paper or critical remarks evaluating the source's quality. Unlike the indicative annotation, however, it gives actual information (hypotheses, proofs, other data) about the source. Usefulness of the text for your research project or for further studyĪn informative (also called summative) annotation also provides a summary of the source.Author's qualifications for writing the work / authority of the publisher.Way it compares to other works on the topic.

Work's contribution to the literature of the subject.

This kind of annotation usually begins with broad comments about the focus of the source, then moves to more details, and then to your evaluative comments. In addition to a summary of the essential ideas, it provides judgments-negative, positive, or both-about their quality.

Summary of the main points can include topics or chapter titlesĪn evaluative (also known as a critical) annotation includes an analysis of the work.

Description of the contents and a statement of the main argument (i.e., what is the book about?).There are four main types of annotations.Ī descriptive (also called an indicative) annotation gives a brief overview or summary of the text. An annotated bibliography describes the field of research on a topic and should include sources that reflect the range of approaches to the subject.

Examples of annotations for articles