Educational Technology for Faculty: Annotation Tools

Annotation can be a way to have students engage more thoroughly with a text, and it is particularly well-suited to hybrid or online classes that involve asynchronous work. That said, it's also possible to have breakouts into groups or have a live annotation blitz during synchronous class time.

Research and case studies have been being published regarding the value of social annotation in particular. Social annotation involves not just annotative practices, but replying and conversing with others doing the same.

One proponent of annotation is Remi Kalir. He has written about annotation and calls it a “participatory act.” He argues that annotation deepens understanding and inspires community, and in 2025, his book going into the social and political aspects of annotation will be released.

Here are some tidbits from recent research regarding the value of social annotation:

Here are some student free responses included in a recent exploration of social annotation use in a psychology class, focusing on the annotation aspects: “I felt very engaged in the process” and “Having to annotate requires you to actually think about what you’re reading and helps you absorb the information” (Lazzara & Clinton-Lisell, 2024).

A study on social annotation and the behavioral patterns of students suggested that those who replied to annotations “[...] spent considerably more time engaged in active reading, possibly due to their interest in not only the original text but also in exploring others’ annotations” (Li et al., 2024).

• Annotation Tools guide from CUNY Academic Commons
  This guide lists a ton of different annotation tools, with a focus on higher ed and how professors can use annotation in their classes.
• Digital Annotation from San Diego State University (#DHSDSU)
  Guide with additional use cases for digital annotation. In particular, it offers an idea of how Diigo might be integrated into a larger digital humanities project. Note that Diigo has an educator sign-up option, although it requires you to make an account with your .edu address.
• Videos from AnnotatED 2024, a conference on the pedagogy of annotation. Link goes to a YouTube playlist. The 2025 conference will be held virtually in April.

Here is a short bibliography of some further research to explore. All sources are either open-access or available within Columbia College's databases.

de Oliveira Neto, F. G., & Dobslaw, F. (2024). Building Collaborative Learning: Exploring Social Annotation in Introductory Programming. Proceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training, 12–21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3639474.3640063

Faix, A., & Baker, A. (2025). Create Engaging Library Resource Lists: Helping Faculty Discover Educational Technologies for Curating and Sharing Library Resources. The Southeastern Librarian, 72(4). https://doi.org/10.62915/0038-3686.2104

Huang, X., Zheng, J., Li, S., Zhu, G., Du, H., Zhong, T., Hou, C., & Lajoie, S. (2024). Investigating the effect of emotional tone on learners’ reading engagement and peer acknowledgement in social annotation. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 40(6), 92–107. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.9122

Kelly, A. E., & Clinton-Lisell, V. (2024). Strengthening Online Psychology Students’ Sense of Belonging with Social Annotation: An Experimental Study. Psychology Learning & Teaching, 14757257241295302. https://doi.org/10.1177/14757257241295302

Lazzara, J., & Clinton-Lisell, V. (2024). Using social annotation to enhance student engagement in psychology courses. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 10(4), 605–611. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000335

Li, S., Huang, X., Zhu, G., Du, H., Zhong, T., Hou, C., & Zheng, J. (2024). Exploring behavioural patterns and their relationships with social annotation outcomes. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 40(4), 1389–1399. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12958

Sigmon, A. J., Lee, E., & Bodek, M. (2024). Transforming Student Interactions with Flipped Content from an Isolated, Passive Activity into a Collaborative and Engaging Endeavor. Journal of Chemical Education, 101(8), 3107–3117. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c01007

Check out this recording from the recent "Engaging Edtech: Annotation for Learning" workshop here, as well as the presentation slides here.

Looking to add an annotation assignment in Canvas?

Go to the Assignments page, create a new assignment, and look for the "Submission Type" box. Change to "Online," which will open up some checkboxes.

Click the "Student Annotation" checkbox.

From there, you can upload the document that you want students to annotate! I recommend sharing this guide with students to walk them through how to use the annotation tool. I also suggest creating screenshots or a short video if you want to ensure full understanding.

Note: if you want to add additional "social" aspects, you can assign annotations as peer reviews. While the peer reviewers can't annotate the annotations, they can leave feedback as a response to the other student.