What is this all about?
Scroll down to find digital learning ideas for our major assignments.
Improving Annotation & Analysis
Document Annotation with PDFEscape, hypothes.is, and Scrible
Most of us want our students to mark up, or annotate, readings for their research, particularly as it's a way for students to find valuable information and ask questions of their source material. Some students may take notes by hand, but because most students are now accessing readings and information online, exposing our students to options for annotating readings digitally is valuable. Check out several tool recommendations below that may help you decide which options may work well for your class.
PDFEscape allows students to highlight, add notes, underline, and draw on a PDF. To use PDFEscape, students go to the PDFEscape website, upload their PDF to the web platform (just like you would add an attachment to an e-mail), and then can annotate the PDF within the website. Because all of PDFEscape's functionality is in-browser, students do not have to download any additional software (which can slow down the annotation process, particularly if the students are doing the annotation work during face-to-face class time). When students have completed their annotations, they can download a fully-annotated PDF. To save work in the interface, students need to create an account, so the tool may not be as useful for students who want to keep a robust database of annotated PDFs on their hard drive. However, PDFEscape is a lightweight introduction to an annotation tool that could be particularly useful for instructor use during classroom sessions.
A toolbar that you can add into your browser window, Scrible allows you and students to add notes, highlights, and other annotations to any online text or PDF. Students will need to create separate accounts to use Scrible, but this program may offer an effective way for students to maintain a record of annotations for the rhetorical analysis assignment. While students cannot annotate collaboratively in Scrible, they can easily share annotations with each other if students all have Scrible accounts.
For instructors interested in asking students to annotate web sources collaboratively, hypothes.is allows users to annotate any part of the Web. Instructors can create educator accounts that allow them to build "classroom" annotation spaces. What that means is that students can access a single URL and then work together in a calssroom workspace to annotate the Web source.
Image Annotation with ThingLink
This tool allows instructors and students alike to add annotations to images so that students can offer deep insight and analysis into different elements of an image. To use ThingLink, students upload an image that they want to analyze. Then, they have the option to add notes about the image in the form of text or links to other resources.
Video Annotation with VideoAnt
A web-based video annotation tool based out of the University of Minnesota, VideoAnt allows students to annotate video clips. While the annotations do not appear on the video itself, a sidebar with the string of student comments - and at which minute they're commenting upon - is useful for students who want to take notes on videos and see what their peers have to say about the rhetorical moves within the video.
Demystifying Concept Mapping and Seeing Source Connections
Brainstorming Connections Between Research Ideas
Our students often struggle to see how different research ideas build upon each other or how they might be connected in a conversation. One way that we might help students better understand how scholarship can be in conversation is by helping students visualize what the connections are between different pieces of scholarship and how they overlap and differ. These tools are meant primarily to evoke different ways of thinking and help students understand that no one voice can speak for the multitude of perspectives cultivated around research topics.
Yewno, a tool available through Stanford Libraries, allows students to see connections between different search terms and topics in a concept map. While students may find sources related to the search terms through Yewno, the tool is primarily useful for helping students see what concepts might be related to other concepts or search terms that they're researching. In the left-hand column of the interface, for example, students can find definitions and links to related articles. They can also map relationships between different search terms by clicking on different parts of the map and expanding particular "nodes" of ideas.
PearlTrees allows students to upload links, text-based notes, or photos to a canvas where students can then organize, cluster, and group particular sources together. This tool is very similar to students writing down sources on index cards and trying to shuffle the index cards into grouped categories. However, by going through this process digitally, students may find it easier to recollect particular sources, link their source documents to their boards, and keep an archive of their thinking about how their sources can be clustered and organized.
LucidChart is a mind-mapping tool that allows students to create flowcharts and process-based diagrams that may help them see the relationships between different sources, topics, or individuals.
Source Organization, Management, and Mapping
For students who have little experience tackling independent research projects, knowing how to organize sources and map connections between them is a skill that we tend to take for granted. These tools may help students keep track of and manage sources, all while maintaining a record of their research ideas and contributions.
Zotero allows students to create entries for each of their sources. By creating individual entries, students can keep track of the article PDF or text, the citation information about the source, and any notes that they take about the source. Students can also add individual tags to sources so that students can organize and cluster sources by individual topics that may be relevant to the work that they're conducting for their research project.
RefWorks is a Stanford-sponsored citation management tool that allows students to organize and collect their sources. Through creating individual entries, students can keep track of the article PDF or text, the citation information about the source, and any notes that they take about the source. If students find their sources through SearchWorks, there is a button in the SearchWorks catalog that allows students to automatically add a source to RefWorks.
Encouraging Experimentation Across Modes
It can be easy for us to get into routines with how we teach and encourage our students to communicate their research-based ideas. Our students stand to benefit from communicating research beyond traditional academic genres so that they have experience experimenting with forms of communication and discovering how to use visuals, sounds, and movement to capture their ideas. Giving our students a flexible toolkit of skills will behoove them as they move forward in the academy and encounter new rhetorical situations where writing in academic genres may not necessarily be the most appropriate or the clearest response. Here are a few ideas for getting students thinking about how they might "remix" their projects in creative and potentially even public-facing ways.
Video-Based Projects
"NowThis"-Style Documentary Video
A lot of the video content streaming on social media contain only brief slideshows of clips with music and text-based captions. It is easy for students to create videos like this on a number of platforms. Mac users may find iMovie most accessible, while Windows users might turn to Windows Movie Creator. An in-browser solution to creating a video like this is Adobe Spark (though the video editing options in Adobe Spark are limited).
Vlog-Style Video
Vlogs are basically video-based versions of "blog" posts. They are informal videos where students may record themselves speaking extemporaneously and personally about a topic of their choosing. Most students may just want to record themselves on a webcam on their computer or on their phone's web camera. If students do not have access to video recording software, they may want to see what their options are for checking out a camera and a microphone from the Lathrop Tech Desk, where equipment can be checked out for 24-hour time periods.
"Whiteboard"-Drawing Video
For students who want a video that may help them to explain a concept while "drawing" the diagrams, terms, or ideas that go along with it, a "whiteboard"-talk may be a genre that interests them. While the professional versions of these videos tend to be created through stop-motion animation, there are free video-makers that allow students to simulate the genre of the "whiteboard" talk without having to own or use complex equipment. PowToon, Animaker, and VideoScribe all offer free versions of whiteboard creation or cartoon creation software that students can access in browser (they will not need to download or buy additional software to use these programs).
Image-Based Projects
Infographic
Infographics are a great way for students to represent information visually. Through infographics, students can show relationships between workflows, processes, objects, and ideas. There are lots of free infographic creation tools available on the Web. Canva and Piktochart are both popular, browser-based, free programs for creating infographics.
Photo Essay/Collage
Many popular journalistic outlets use photo essays to tell stories of a particular topic. A powerful genre/modes assignment could ask students to create a collage or put together a series of photographs that might tell an illustrative story of a research topic.
Audio-Based Projects
Podcast
Podcasts are audio-based stories that include a mixture of narration, interviews, and ambient sounds. Students can use audio recording software on smartphones or check out audio recorders from Lathrop Library's Tech Desk. They can then edit their audio clips using free audio editing software like Audacity that is easily available for download.
Interview
Audio interviews are common ways for students to explore a research topic in greater depth. While podcasts may include interviews, a student may want to devote a whole project to an interview so that they can have a clearer understanding of how a particular person understands or explains a research project.
