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Annotation in Teaching and Learning

Whether you're writing notes in the margin of a paperback book or collaboratively adding comments to a digital document, annotation can be a powerful tool for learning—and thus also for teaching.

Learning Technologies
Updated January 2025
Derek Bruff headshot
Derek Bruff
Associate Director
Center for Teaching Excellence
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01

Annotation and Learning with Remi Kalir

Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching

In this audio interview, annotation scholar Remi Kalir defines annotation, outlines how it partners with reading to construct knowledge, and shares strategies for using annotation, especially collaborative or social annotation, as a teaching method.

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Derek Bruff

This interview is a fantastic introduction to the power of annotation in learning. Remi Kalir is a scholar of annotation (yes, that's a thing!) and he brings that scholarship to his conversations on teaching and learning.

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02

Annotate Your Syllabus 4.0

Remi Kalir

One annotation strategy that Remi Kalir recommends is to ask students to collaboratively annotate your syllabus. Doing so can reveal to you how your students are thinking about your course and provide students a way to see themselves as active participants in the course.

Headshot of Derek Bruff
Derek Bruff

Instead of "going over" the syllabus with your students, why not invite them to interact and engage with it? In this blog post, Remi Kalir shares his annotated syllabus statement, provides some practical strategies for this course activity, and links to further resources on syllabus annotation.

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Welcome to our Annotated Syllabus. This syllabus—like our course—is incomplete without you and your commentary. This Annotated Syllabus is the start of a conversation about our course, your learning, and shared accomplishment. We will annotate our syllabus by: Asking clarifying questions; sharing opinions about readings and assignments; noting confusions and uncertainties; responding to policies; providing advice; and reflecting on what works and what can change. While your annotation may be critical, let us strive for commentary that is inquisitive and constructive. Your ongoing thoughts are welcome anytime so that this syllabus documents our learning together this semester.

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03

Asynchronous Active Learning with Perusall

Agile Learning

This blog post outlines a variety of ways to engage students in collaborative annotations of course texts, including audio and video. Included are suggestions for getting students started with annotation and structures for ensuring students are making different "moves" when annotating.

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Derek Bruff

Back in 2021, I taught a course that was asynchronous online one day a week and found annotation to be an incredibly flexible tool for engaging students in active learning in that teaching modality. See this blog post of mine for lots of practical examples of learning with annotation.

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The first asynchronous day of the course, Wednesday, February 3rd, served as the students’ introduction to Perusall. I asked students to read and annotate three recent news articles about surveillance and privacy...

Since this was the students’ first time using Perusall (at least in my course), I suggested a few different annotation “moves” they could make as they read the articles:

  • What is unclear or confusing about the article? You’re welcome to highlight a sentence or phrase and ask questions about it.

  • What do you find surprising within the article? You might highlight a passage and comment on why it surprised you.

  • What arguments presented in the article do you find compelling… or problematic? You might highlight a quote and comment on why you agree or disagree with it.

  • What connections can you draw between the article and other things we have read or discussed in this course? You can highlight something in the article and comment on the connection you see.

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04

Opening Books: Social Annotation and Open Educational Resources

Hypothesis

This panel moderated by Robin DeRosa and hosted by the annotation tool Hypothesis features a trio of instructors who combine collaborative annotation with open educational resources.

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Derek Bruff

Moderator Robin DeRosa is one of the first instructors I knew to have students collaboratively annotate open educational resources (OERs). In her case, those resources were early American works of literature in the public domain. OERs and annotation are a really nice pairing!

Video
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05

Five Ways to Use Social Annotation With and Against ChatGPT

Hypothesis

With the advent of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, many instructors are shifting their instruction focus from the output of student work to the process of student work. This article describes five ways that annotation can be used to support and enhance that process approach.

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Derek Bruff

Some of the details about what ChatGPT can and can't do are now dated in this article, but the core ideas about using annotation to emphasize the process of learning (and to make that process more visible) hold up very well more than a year later.

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Part of the problem that ChatGPT presents in education is in how teachers assess student work, though these challenges were not created by generative AI. A summative assessment causes both student and teacher to focus all their attention into a singular product that is supposed to stand in for a larger set of critical processes enacted over time. But with annotation that final product can also be a record of all those earlier stages in the act of production. When students annotate their own writing they gain agency in the assessment process rather than being merely a subject of it.

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