Collaboration in the classroom through the annotation of digital readings provides instructors with insight into how students engage with texts — including how they generate clarity around concepts and make broader connections with reading materials — and with opportunities to engage students directly in conversation on top of readings. Such activities also enable students to benefit from close-reading interaction with their peers. Learn how combining annotation with digital readings can benefit everyone in the classroom.Many may already be familiar with how collaborative annotation has been leveraged to improve pre- and post-publication workflows in scholarly communication. The same technology is used in higher education classrooms for similar interactions, making some of the most fundamental academic activities — reading, comprehending, and analyzing — visible, active, and social like never before. Collaborative annotation can be used in a number of ways to increase student engagement and outcomes through meaningful student-student and instructor-student interaction grounded in course readings. Students can help each other through difficult assignments and instructors can intervene and inspire as desired or necessary. Activated on top of texts delivered through the LMS and other learning platforms, annotation can also be used for formative or summative assessment.
