Collaborative annotation (or social annotation) tools are available to support community learning and collaboration on digital content. These tools make it possible for multiple collaborators to comment or annotate in the same document and share those annotations. The University of Toronto has three collaborative annotation solutions available to faculty, students, and staff: Microsoft 365, Leganto, and Hypothesis.
- Microsoft 365: suite of tools that allow creation and collaboration in shared files
- Leganto: The library reading list app in Quercus will have Social Annotation features enabled
- Hypothesis: web and pdf annotation.
Below are some examples of how the collaborative annotation tool could be used for your teaching and learning goals. For more ideas, see 10 Ways to Annotate with Students from the Hypothes.is blog.
Pedagogical applications:
Microsoft Office 365 | Leganto | Hypothesis | |
|---|---|---|---|
| create and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, or presentations | |||
| collaborate on a course wiki | |||
| review and share feedback on work uploaded by a student | |||
| ask and respond to questions in a course reading | |||
| save and download study notes | |||
| add links to related content | |||
| allow seamless collaborative annotation of PDFs in your Library Reading List | |||
| easily access copyrighted material from the library | |||
| assess student understanding and engagement with a critical reading | |||
| encourage active reading of digital content | |||
| review and share comments for group work | |||
| support comprehension of academic literature | |||
| review and suggest edits to open textbooks | |||
| engage in discussion-like feedback for an assigned reading | |||
| share feedback or corrections on computer source code documents | |||
| extract reports or data analytics on student activity (to identify engagement patterns, for example) | |||
| endorse or boost community annotations (through highlighted annotations, tags, or shortcuts to specific annotations) | |||
| categorize comments and/or sections of a document through use of hashtags in annotations | |||
| collaborative navigation of a webpage |
July 2023 – Collaborative Annotation Tools update:
Following the University’s open tendering process, we are pleased to let instructors know that we now support three solutions in this category of teaching tools – MS365, Leganto Reading List app, and Hypothesis. For more information on the selection process, please visit the ARC major projects update Wiki.