Collaborative annotation tools allow you and your students to discuss a text, website, video, or other media through shared marginalia. It's a form of asynchronous discussion, but instead of taking place within a message board tool (such as D2L Discussions), the conversation happens in comments attached directly on a digital document, web page, or video timeline track. Better still, each discussion thread - a starting comment and subsequent replies - is keyed to a highlighted word or passage, or a specific time on the video timeline.
In D2L, we have access to two toolsets: Perusall, and Hypothesis. While the former can handle student annotations on videos, we recommend that professors try Hypothes.is first, since it is simpler to use.
While this is a distinctly different experience that using a D2L discussion topic, many of the tips for developing and managing discussions, discussed later in this lesson, apply to collaborative annotation as well. You can just as easily develop a variety of prompts for collaborative annotation, and can post within the conversation yourself.
In COLI, we recommend that professors try Hypothes.is before firmly deciding to use D2L discussions. Since so many online class discussions focus on texts, Hypothes.is provides an added benefit of bringing the conversation to the text itself!
Here's our video showing students how Hypothes.is works. You can quickly see from it why this is a great discussion mode where the class conversation should happen around a text, such as a .pdf file or website.
Hypothesis is not difficult to deploy in your class, and as you see above, you have a handy video to share with your students to show them how to use it.
Additionally, Hypothes.is has a great website with plenty of tips on how to use it effectively in coursework.