Posted 4:13 p.m. Monday, Oct. 24, 2022
Not too late to try this semester!
Getting the most out of social annotation assignments – Structure is the Key!
Like any other skill, students need to learn how to use the tool you provide them, they also need help engaging in the way you would like them to. How often does it work to just ask students to “discuss” the content they are learning? I am guessing very rarely. Providing guidance, sentence stems, feeder questions and other guiding processes helps our students understand and know what they are supposed to be doing at any given time. Social annotation with hypothesis is no different, it helps students get the most out of an assignment if you provide them with some guidance.
One way to structure an hypothesis assignment is in parts.
Part 1: Read – Students are encouraged to read through the supplied reading keeping a set of questions or guidelines in mind.
Part 2: Annotate – While they are reading, students should be adding highlights and annotations to what they are reading. Providing students with a set of questions, or a document that has been pre-annotated by you, will help students know what they are supposed to be doing.
Part 3: Respond – This one is the important part as it encompasses the social aspect of the tool. Have students respond to their group/classmates about similar thoughts, clarifications, even answering questions that are posed by their peers.
The ideas of how you could use this tool to encourage interactivity and reading skills to your classes are limited only by your imagination.
Want to learn more about using hypothesis in your course? Contact CATL to learn more or check out these websites about social annotation and hypothesis
- Want to know more about how to use in in your class? Head to the hypothesis website.
- Interested in learning more about social annotation in general? This blog does a great job with an overview.
- Wondering how to help students start annotating? These annotation tips for students should help.
- Curious about what the research says? Inside Higher Ed provides a summary of a recent study done by Morales et al. (2022).