Annotate Your Syllabus

September 2020 Update: View all #AnnotatedSyllabus posts and resources.

Update 8/17: ThinqStudio invites CU Denver faculty and others to attend a “pop-up” workshop next Friday, August 24, from 12:00-1:30 pm at Inworks about annotating course syllabi. The workshop’s goal: Turn your syllabus into a living and breathing document. Create an interactive space for you and your students to collaboratively discuss learning. This workshop is appropriate for instructors across all disciplines, who teach both undergraduate and graduate courses, who teach both face-to-face and online, and for those who may not be familiar with web annotation technologies and practices. Participants should bring a computer, curiosity about open and collaborative web annotation, and an interest in innovative teaching and learning practices. This informal and hands-on workshop will be held at Inworks (1250 14th Street in the CU Denver Building on the corner with Larimer) and is a brown bag lunch.

I’ll also note that this isn’t a 101 primer on getting started with open or collaborative annotation using Hypothesis. Moreover, I highly recommend reading through Hypothesis’ education resources, too.

Let’s start here: Annotation is the addition of a note to a text. Web annotation brings the everyday activity of annotation into digital spaces and allows people – educators, students, journalists, scholars, activists – to mark up online texts, like PDFs, websites, blog posts, and other digital documents found online (like a syllabus). Open web annotation (or OWA) is defined by three qualities of the open Web – open standards, open principles, and open practices. First, OWA technical specifications follow a standardized architecture that is interoperable, sharable, and distributed. Second, OWA is guided by principles of openness such as accessibility, decentralization, and transparency. And third, the open practices encouraged by OWA are similar to those found among participatory cultures whereby collaborative activity – including both more formal and interest-driven learning – is accomplished through distributed networks, collective intelligence, and negotiation. There’s also notable alignment between the open practices encouraged by OWA and open educational practices (or OEP).

Hypothesis exemplifies OWA: The technology is open-source and interoperable, aside from an email address the organization doesn’t collect personally identifiable information, public annotations are attributed with a public domain dedication (CC0), annotators retain the intellectual property of all their annotations, and the organization is quite transparent and really practices what they preach (they also provide excellent technical and pedagogical support for educators). It’s for these reasons that I’ve incorporated Hypothesis OWA into my teaching, creating an opportunity each semester for various learning activities including the annotation of course syllabi.

OK, now we can break down the thread.

OWA in Teaching

A bit of context: In 2016, I started using @hypothes_is open web annotation in my courses. Students read texts together, sometimes publicly though often privately, and use H for collaborative discussion & to deepen convo around topics & ideas based upon interests & questions 2/10

— Remi Kalir (@remikalir) August 13, 2018

I first incorporated Hypothesis OWA into my teaching during 2016. I was teaching a course about Games and Learning. Many of my early experiences with OWA, as well as my mistakes, insights, and reflections on student experiences are captured in the blog. And why did I chose to do so? I was teaching online. And I needed to stop using threaded discussion forums for conversation about course readings and, rather, create more student-centered and discursive learning opportunities. In this post from early 2016, I wrote about my design rationale which featured three primary shifts:

• From the privacy – and primacy – of LMS (specifically Canvas) discussion forums to the public “playground” afforded by Hypothesis;
• From the formality of pre-determined questions (which can privilege the scope and purpose of reading) to open-ended and less formal (re)action and exchange; and
• From an instructor’s authority to center and control textual discourse to a de-centering of power through a fracturing of attention, interest, and commitment.

Annotating the Syllabus

In addition to collaboratively annotating texts for discussion throughout the semester, my students and I also use @hypothes_is to annotate our syllabus together. And we do so during the very first week of class. This activity serves a number of very important functions. 3/10

— Remi Kalir (@remikalir) August 13, 2018

These days, whether I teach on campus, online, or in some hybrid configuration, my students and I always start the semester annotating our syllabus together. Prior to our first class session, I will have already shared our syllabus with the course either via email or through a learning management system (LMS). Then, either during our first class session or as part of an online introductory activity, we’ll begin our shared reading, annotation, and discussion of the syllabus. And here’s what this activity accomplishes:

Building Skills, Establishing Norms

First, web annotation is new for many students. They need to create a @hypothes_is account. There are technical skills to learn. There are also social norms to develop. Guiding students to annotate our syllabus is low risk, scaffolds skill building and begins to build norms. 4/10

— Remi Kalir (@remikalir) August 13, 2018

Annotating our syllabus provides a practical and authentic reason for students to first sign up for their Hypothesis account. And all they need is an email address to sign up; their school email will suffice. When creating an account, we briefly discuss the pros and cons of creating an anonymous Hypothesis handle or one that can be easily associated with the individual (for example, my handle is “remikalir”). Across many courses and many semesters, I’ve found that about a third of my students create anonymous handles (i.e. “blue1234”), another third select handles that are somewhat associated with their names (i.e. “remi1234”), and the final third create handles that are their names (like “remikalir”).

Once students have created an account, they join a private group set up for our course and then begin building technical skills and also establishing our course’s social norms. Again, this post isn’t a tutorial. But briefly, my students and I practice toggling between public and private group layers, adding links, images, and videos to our annotations, and using Hypothesis Search (which is very useful for accessing our private group information).

Asking Questions

Second, annotating our syllabus is an opportunity for students to ask questions. Maybe an assignment isn’t clear. Is there a mistake with something? Is that a copyediting error? This initial annotation experience raises & addresses many ?s that would pop up later in the term 5/10

— Remi Kalir (@remikalir) August 13, 2018

And because the annotated syllabus is available to students throughout the semester, this record of Q&A is a persistent resource. This shifts classic “It’s in the syllabus, did you read?” to constructive “We discussed this when annotating our syllabus, pls revisit our convo” 6/10

— Remi Kalir (@remikalir) August 13, 2018

As these tweets circulated, I received a question about the types of annotations students typically add to a syllabus. Here’s an incomplete list:

• Clarifying questions – students ask about assignments, course policies, and my opinions on certain ideas or circumstances
• Opinions of readings – students react to familiar readings, express interest in certain topics, suggest alternative readings, or help to complete a syllabus audit (i.e. noting whose voices and research are excluded and/or included/represented in our readings)
• Reactions to assignments – students provide initial reactions to major course activities, inquire about (confusing or important) details, and share feedback for inevitable tweaks
• Appreciation for policies – my syllabi include various policies, some that I’ve developed myself over time and others that are required by my school or university, and annotation is a great way to discuss how these policies are actually practiced
• Peer-to-peer advice – over the course of the semester, students’ annotation becomes a means of peer communication, and annotating the syllabus is a great way for students to commiserate and strategize (this contributes to establishing social norms)
• Strategies for newcomers to my courses & web annotation – any students taking a course with me for a second or third time will use the annotated syllabus to share strategies with newcomers, including practical/technical strategies for using OWA as well as for learning in my courses

A Strategy for Course Co-Design

Third, collaboratively annotating our syllabus shows students that I welcome their questions & feedback, that I value curiosity & opinion, that our course is a work in progress. Among strategies I use to co-design courses with students, annotating our syllabus sets the tone. 7/10

— Remi Kalir (@remikalir) August 13, 2018

I typically teach smaller courses (20-40 students, and often at the graduate level) and I’m a big proponent of course co-design. In my courses, I seek to create the conditions whereby students craft their own learning pathways, pursue their interests, and make the course of use to their immediate and longer-term goals. Practically speaking, this means that assignments change during the semester. And that readings are thrown out and replaced. That units of study are adapted. That instructional activities are created and facilitated by students. And that I welcome students’ critical feedback and respond respectfully to their needs from one week to the next. This is a challenging, intensive, and emotionally-present approach to pedagogy and course design. It also reflects how I approach the design of educator learning. Annotating our syllabus at the beginning of the semester is a first step on this journey of course co-design.

The Shadow Syllabus

Fourth, an annotated syllabus functions as a shadow syllabus. Many of us are required to submit our syllabi for various reasons. Yet many of us also want to include details, ideas or readings not on the record. A private annotation layer creates & shares your shadow syllabus 8/10

— Remi Kalir (@remikalir) August 13, 2018

Whatever the purpose and necessity of authoring a shadow syllabus, use a private annotation layer to do so. My students have appreciated real conversation and honest commentary about what is and isn’t included in our course, as well as how things will likely shake out over our semester together.

A Few Technical Notes

OK so you want to annotate your syllabus with your students? If you’re using @hypothes_is like me, you could host it as a PDF to a blog. And then access via a post or just with the doc’s link. Or use H within the Canvas LMS. Or use https://t.co/vR1v6BBQTb. You’ve got options 9/10

— Remi Kalir (@remikalir) August 13, 2018

As noted in this tweet, I’d recommend three technical approaches to actually annotating your syllabus:

1. Via a blog, upload your syllabus as a PDF and either link to the PDF through a blog post or share the PDF’s unique URL via another online resource. Using Google’s Chrome browser helps. And if you’re more technically inclined use a via proxy link.
2. Use Hypothesis within your LMS. Check out these educator resources to learn about integration with Canvas (which I use), Blackboard, Moodle, and Sakai.
3. Or use https://docdrop.org/.

Commit to Annotated Syllabi

This school year make a commitment to annotated syllabi. Create a Q&A record that will save you and your students time. More importantly, open up your syllabus as a discursive space for students’ questions & conversation. An annotated syllabus will make a meaningful impact. 10/10

— Remi Kalir (@remikalir) August 13, 2018

Educators – make a commitment to annotate your syllabus with your students this school year. As interest in annotated syllabi grows, please share your experiences via Twitter. Use the tag #annotatedsyllabus and mention your course, institution, and any details about you and your students’ experience.