DH Café: Getting Students to Read Critically Through Online Annotations

The Digital Humanities Innovation Lab kicked off its Fall 2017 DH Café series on September 19 as Dr. Juan Pablo Alperin introduced participants to the online annotation tool hypothes.is. Juan is an Assistant Professor in the Publishing Program at Simon Fraser University, and the Associate Director of Research with the Public Knowledge Project.

hypothes.is is a freely available, open source add-on for browsers that allows web pages to be annotated. Anyone with hypothes.is can add marginalia to an online article, blog post, or Wikipedia page, to name just a few examples, and can see any other annotations that have been made to the page. For Juan and educators like him, this tool is highly useful in the classroom, helping students to read thoughtfully and critically, and helping instructors to see what students have found interesting or difficult in course readings.

While hypothes.is works on any online resource, Juan only assigns readings in his Publishing courses that are open access – openly and freely available to anyone with a device and an internet connection. For Juan, teaching students to be more “open” is a part of the mandate of the university. hypothes.is facilitates this by allowing students to annotate open access material online. Since Juan only accepts urls for assignment submissions, the online annotation tool also allows him to give students feedback on their work and make that feedback openly available to other students. He offers students the option of posting anonymously to respect their right to privacy.

Annotating online has pedagogical advantages. As students watch each other annotate, they provide models of critical reading. Instructors can see what students have found interesting or difficult and can adjust their teaching accordingly. As a part of graded work, annotating a course reading forces students to engage more thoughtfully with a text. It can also provide a forum for participation for students who are less comfortable sharing in person in the classroom.

Having students annotate online is not without its challenges. Students may feel discussion has already happened online, leaving less to be addressed during class. Juan has also found that students are primarily motivated by grades to use the annotation tool, and rarely return to the texts. As he continues to develop his digital pedagogy with online annotations, Juan is interested in hearing from other instructors who have already used or are thinking of using hypothes.is in their courses. If you are interested in using online annotation in your classroom, connect with Juan on email at juan@alperin.ca or on Twitter: @juancommander.