Blended Reading Using Collaborative Online Annotation

BLENDED READING USING COLLABORATIVE ONLINE ANNOTATION hari stephen kumar @hariteach Instructional Designer Amherst College [email protected] Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference, Bryn Mawr, May 21, 2015

Collaborative Online Annotation Example: nb.mit.edu

Overview • Motivating pedagogy for blending a reading assignment •  Learning goals and teaching goals • Collaborative annotation tools •  Tool selection and implementation • Usage example • Usage data, student feedback, instructor insights • Challenges:

•  Pedagogy & student orientation •  Accessibility

Pedagogical Overview

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Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)


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Content



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Content

Assignment



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Content

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Transfer



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Teaching = mentoring, coaching, role modeling, facilitative

Learning = collaborative, dynamic, relational, personal

Cost/volume benefits Standardization Grade-friendly



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Blended Learning Online/

Out of class

Face-to-face/ In class


Blended Learning Overview • Combining class time with online learning

experiences to improve student engagement.

•  “... to link, or blend, what happens in each medium so that

face-to-face and online activities reinforce each other to create a single, unified, course.” (Glazer, 2011)

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Blended Learning Overview • NOT just content delivery

Often requires active learning strategies for both the in-person and online components.

• NOT primarily about polished video or high tech

Online content allows for a wide variety of formats, including interactive quizzes and simpler exercises.

•  (*)NOT about reducing class time with teachers Involves making better use of in-person class time with teachers for higher-order engagement and learning.

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Blended Reading: A Case Study • Professor Andrew Dole

Spring 2015 Religion Course Kernel 1: I like PDF reading apps on my iPad, but these apps tend to be for individual readers. What if we had a PDF reader that was built for groups to use together? Kernel 2: Electronic versions of texts are not the same as print versions: no page numbers, dynamic font sizes, etc. Hard to recall locations of key quotes during discussion.

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Blended Reading: Teaching Goals • Professor Andrew Dole

Spring 2015 Religion Course Teaching goal 1: To have visibility into page-level and paragraph-level questions students have about a text before class discussion. Teaching goal 2: Have class discussion around print text enhanced by students’ pre-class online conversations on key pages and paragraphs.

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Blended Reading: Learning Goals • Professor Andrew Dole

Spring 2015 Religion Course Learning goals: Left at same implicit level as before: students read texts in order to understand key concepts and arguments. Syllabus excerpt about goal of reflection posts: “… to express your understanding of the main project of the reading and make it clear what parts of that project you have difficulty understanding.”

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Blended Reading: Syllabus Excerpt

Expectations General: Students are expected to do all of the assigned readings before class, to attend all class sessions and actively participate in classroom discussion. Reflection posts: Beginning in early February, for each class session approximately 5 students will submit reflection posts on the assigned readings (the exact number will be determined after the add/drop period). These posts are to be submitted to the Moodle site for this course by 8:00 PM on the day before class. All students are expected to be familiar with the contents of these reflection posts in advance of the class session. The purpose of these reflection posts is to lay the groundwork for a profitable class discussion. The main thing you should accomplish in your reflection posts is to express your understanding of the main project of the reading and make it clear what parts of that project you have difficulty understanding. These posts are a required part of the course and will count towards your final grade, but they will not be graded individually. So long as you demonstrate thoughtful engagement with the material you will receive credit. Please note that simply summarizing the assigned reading does not count as thoughtful engagement. For a select number of readings, reflection posts will assume a different form. Electronic versions of the assigned texts will be posted online (via the Moodle site or an alternative), and students will make use of a tool that will allow them to append comments to specific parts of the assigned text. For these readings students will be expected to both comment on one or more passages of the assigned text and respond to at least one other student’s comment. In-class presentations: Each student will be assigned responsibility for getting one class meeting’s discussion started. The best way to do this is to speak briefly about your understanding of the contents of the assigned text, taking note of what other students have written in their online comments, and then pose one or more questions to the class for discussion. Papers: There will be three formal papers for the course, due on the dates indicated in the course schedule below.

Blended Reading: Tool Selection • Professor Andrew Dole

Spring 2015 Religion Course Criteria for selecting annotation tools: 1.  Must use facsimile of print text, e.g. scanned PDF. 2.  Must be accessible via course Moodle page (i.e. not

requiring third-party account signup).

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Blended Reading: Tool Selection • Professor Andrew Dole

Spring 2015 Religion Course Review of annotation tools: •  nb.mit.edu: Works great with scanned PDFs, but no LTI

integration with Moodle. •  eMargin: Works great with Moodle, but only works with

plain text. • Annotation Studio: Great interface, but only works with

plain text, and does not integrate with Moodle. •  hypothes.is: Great interface, but only works with plain

text, and does not integrate with Moodle out of the box.

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Blended Reading: Tool Implementation • Professor Andrew Dole

Spring 2015 Religion Course Implementation choice: •  nb.mit.edu: Works great with scanned PDFs, but no LTI

integration with Moodle. • Solution: Open source – we added LTI integration and are

contributing the code back to the NB team at MIT.

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Blended Reading: Usage Example

Blended Reading: Usage Data • Overview: 8 students, 12 reading assignments •  2 students per reading assignment

•  Each required to post 3 comments, then post 1 reply

Student Posts Replies A-M 4 0 B-M 13 3 C-F 10 2 D-M 7 3 E-M 13 3 F-M 7 0 G-F 3 0 H-M 6 0

Blended Reading: Usage Data • Active pairs:

Student Posts Replies A-M 4 0 B-M 13 3 C-F 10 2 D-M 7 3 E-M 13 3 F-M 7 0 G-F 3 0 H-M 6 0

Blended Reading: Usage Data

Blended Reading: Usage Data • B & C interactions:

Blended Reading: Usage Data • D & E interactions:

Blended Reading: Usage Data • An interaction between C (F) & B (M):

Blended Reading: Usage Data •  C’s post:

In the remainder of the chapter Douglas explains how different social setups regarding the nature of gendered dominance result in different sexual pollution and purity concerns. In cases where male dominance is applied with "ruthless simplicity", there are few pollution worries due to the system's overall simplicity, but in cases where certain male and female powers/privileges seem to contradict, more purity considerations are required to maintain the fragile and complicated social structure. Douglas doesn't, however, explain how these differences in social structure arise, or what they are a result of. What conditions might cause these two kinds of societies to form? Is there any reason that one would form over the other? Is Douglas' lack of origin explanation a weakness to her overall argument?

•  B’s reply: [C], I very much agree with this. In my opinion, the inability to explain origins is a big fault in Douglas' argument. There are a plethora of factors that could have influenced discrepancies in social structures and in turn, affected what a society deems to be sexual pollution. These factors could have instead possibly shaped views on pollution directly, without necessarily going through the process of becoming incorporated into a "social set up.” I think Douglas, however, would say that it doesn't matter where the origins came from. Instead, we should simply examine the structures, as they are what shape society, and examine how these different setups lead to different results.

Blended Reading: Usage Data Summary • Students seemed to treat it as a homework task to fulfill:

post 3 times, reply once. • Content of comments were more like a mini-essay staking

a claim rather than a dialogue seeking understanding. • Claims made in comments were often looking to critique a

flaw in a narrow area of the text’s logic, but sometimes ill-informed about the text’s overall main argument.

Blended Reading: Student Feedback • What did you find most useful about the tool?

•  The tool helped streamline my reading and critical thinking process. Instead of reading a text, annotating it, and then crafting a prose response for it, I could more directly transfer my notes from the text to specific points in the reading. If I had written down something on page 50 of my book, I could easily flip to page 50 on the tool and comment on the exact section. With the referenced text right next to the comment, I could cut down on my summary and really explore what was pertinent about the text.

Blended Reading: Student Feedback • How did your use of the tool prepare you for discussion?

•  I thought the tool was most helpful for class preparation by placing students in conversation with each other before the class started. Reading and replying to comments from other individuals allowed me to gain a full new perspective and develop text-based arguments before we even met for class. Additionally, the tool provided me a chance to organize my thoughts about a text before class on a diverse array of topics within the text.

Blended Reading: Student Feedback • What was different about using this tool versus previous

ways of posting reflections? •  Before we started using the tool, our class had individuals write

reading responses. These reading responses gave us the same opportunity to organize our thoughts and think critically about the text before class. However, I found that these responses often were too broad to be analytically effective. Additionally, they did not allow students to converse over the text. Moreover, our reading responses did not have the bonus of being directly appended to the text. In this way, they had to spend more time talking about the text, rather than what the text does, and they couldn't cover as many topics in depth.

Blended Reading: Student Feedback • How would you suggest improving the tool or improving its

use in the class? •  We only had two individuals per class use the tool. I would certainly

suggest even more students per class use the tool in order to advance the discussion even more. As far as format - I think it would be cool to be able to connect comments on different passages.

Blended Reading: Instructor Insights •  Learning goals for “comprehension” versus

“conversation”: Need to clarify to students the purpose of posting questions on the text: distinguish between questions on reading comprehension versus questions that prepare for genuine in-class discussion.

• Shape classroom culture: Tool provides opportunity to change classroom culture toward more collaborative dynamic rather than practicing individual claims.

Missed Alignments in Pedagogy

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Blended Learning Online/

Out of class

Face-to-face/ In class

Most assigned readings are at this level.

Most assigned papers expect work at this level.


Blended Reading: Challenges • Pedagogy & student orientation:

Student focus: “assignment” layer – ‘apply’, ‘analyze’ Assigned readings: “transfer” layer – ‘evaluate’, ‘create’ Instructor focus in-class: Somewhere between “content” and “assignment” – ensuring student understanding through applied discussion.

• Where and how should students get explicit modeling and teaching of the ‘analyze’ level of learning expected in their papers?

Blended Reading: Challenges • Accessibility:

NB.mit.edu is a great visual tool, but it is not accessible to visually impaired users. It is also not usable on mobile devices. Overall, broad challenge with accessibility when using online annotation tools.

BLENDED READING USING COLLABORATIVE ONLINE ANNOTATION hari stephen kumar @hariteach Instructional Designer Amherst College [email protected]

THANK YOU!

Blended Reading Using Collaborative Online Annotation

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