This week I am seeing the results of including group annotations for readings in my online class for the first time. The results have been exciting using hypothes.is with assigned readings in business ethics a first year elective course.
Here is how we are using it for the first time and how I might change this for future use.
How we used it:
1. There are four group readings in the course and the students have 1 – 2 weeks per reading. The readings varied in length. The longest I assigned was an 11 page reading for business ethics which is about alternatives to capitalism. For that particular reading as it was part of a book in pdf format and to reduce confusion about the assignment I have taken the pdf of the reading, cut out the chapter that I want to use for this exercise and linked it to my own website. The page is not viewable from my site. Only those with the link can see it. The shortest reading was 4 pages.
2. I have assigned each student to contribute a minimum of three annotations to each page. A question about something they have read, a general comment and a connection from one idea to another outside the reading. Something they have read from another source, something they have experienced or something they know from another media source.
The rubric I developed is here:
| 5-4 | 3-2 | 1 | 0 |
| You had one question one comment related to other knowledge and one important or surprising information annotation per page. | You missed some annotation requirements of the assignment. | You missed annotating the majority of the assigned work. | You did not annotate. |
| Your contributions were thought provoking and contributed to the community understanding. | Your contributions contributed to the community understanding. | Your contributions did not serve the community understanding. | You did not contribute or contributed something incomprehensible. |
3. How we set up.
I provided the link to students to sign up for an account with hypothesis.is. Students needed to set up their user name with an identifying name. They cannot use funny internet user names because I have tied this to marks. If they call themselves “spookyghost14” I will not be able to mark them. Professionalism is an overarching program learning outcome so they are asked to make their user name their first name and last initial.
I send them the link to the private group page:
https://hypothes.is/groups/jro6q5xr/ethics-2020spring and the instructions for hypothes.is set up and how to use it using screen shots that are in the LMS. The first session is live (this was taught in a DL format) and students were asked to sign up at the end of the session so we could confirm they had signed up and I could walk them through any issues they had with that process. The browser requirements (chrome) was the main technical difficulty students encountered. The assigned readings would then be in the LMS and students would use the link to the readings with hypothes.is to contribute to the annotations.
Why it worked:
Most of my students are international with English as their second language. A group reading allowed for a few successes that are worth mentioning.
1. It is obvious the majority of my students do not participate in assigned readings in normal circumstances. Tying the reading to low stakes marks ensured they completed the readings and were rewarded for it. They also had individual readings in the course but these ones were completed and considered.
2. Reading how students make sense of the concepts was super insightful. Looking into how students are making sense of the concepts feels like they are inviting the group into their own thought process and this created a real sense of community and collaboration without video conferencing (this course was in the first month of the pandemic pivot to distance learning.) It provide another way to collaborate outside of synchronous sessions and discussion forums.
3. It helped me gauge their comprehension of topics and I could elaborate on certain questions students had in the annotations themselves or in other ways. The feedback from the annotations was insightful and quickly gave me a sense of their reading abilities which then allowed me to choose readings that would stretch their reading skills.
One way that it did not work was when students did not get signed up right away for Hypothes.is. I had one student who just missed the whole thing and then caught up later in the course. This often happens, where students clue into something late but in this case I wish I had realized earlier and did not let him fall behind (the same regrets that happen with any assessment students do not complete on time).
A change I would likely considering making in the future:
In this assignment I am telling students to do three things per page and because of the congestion on the page I would probably reduce these requirements in the future or break out the reading link into groups. So there are say 4 – 6 students per annotation. Each group would be sent a different link. Students would only see a small group’s links rather than a 20 plus class contributing to one document.
I may also use this in readings which are heavier and less easily understood. For instance in an economics reading where students need to make sense of graphs and models. This might be a good tool to see their understanding and give them a way to collaborate and stay engaged with those readings that seem less appealing.
Example from Ethics Spring course Pivot to DL
