Social Annotation with Perusall Professor Winnie Yu spoke to the BOLT team about her experiences using social annotation Social annotation is an increasingly popular way for readers to come together virtually and share ideas about what they are reading, whether it be the latest novel or a set paper on a university course. We spoke to Professor Winne Yu from PolyU’s Institute of Textiles & Clothing about how she has been using this approach with her learners. Turn to page 3 for the interview
The BOLT Project Newsletter Issue 4
Starts 9 Jan 2017 see Page 4
BOLT Foundation Course Cohort 4
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ALT and BOLT: a perfect match FREE associate membership for all PolyU, EdUHK and HKBU colleagues!
BOLT
news
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We are delighted to announce that BOLT is supporting Organisational Membership of the Association for Learning Technology for staff at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, The Education University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Baptist University! Turn to page 2 for more details
Page 2 ALT and BOLT: a Perfect Match Social Annotation with Perusall BOLT Cohort 4 Upcoming Events
Q: What does ALT Organisational Membership mean for me?
A: ALT Organisational membership entitles you to individual Associate Membership of ALT with the following benefits: Access to member-only events and delegate discounts on face-to-face events (e.g. 20% discount for annual ALT conference) Access ALT’s Members Mailing Lists to join in the conversation with practitioners and researchers in the ed-tech world Participate in ALT’s Learning Technologist of the Year Awards and stay in touch with ALT members via activities on Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn, and via the hashtag #alt
Sign up and let us know how you are making use of your ALT membership on
Q: What’s the background?
ALT and BOLT:
A: The UGC-funded BOLT project is aimed at developing teachers’ skills in online and blended learning. Part of the project looks at the Association for Learning Technology, the organisation behind CMALT and already provides support for those seeking accreditation via our CMALT Professional Development Module. To extend that commitment, the BOLT Project is delighted to report that PolyU, EdUHK and HKBU will all be ALT Organisational Members for the next 3 years.
A: Sign up here with your work email address from PolyU, EdUHK or HKBU
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bolthk@polyu.edu.hk
Q: How do I become an Associate Member?
a perfect match
Free associate membership for all PolyU, EdUHK and HKBU colleagues!
A: ALT states “We are the UK's leading membership organisation in the learning technology field. Our purpose is to ensure that use of learning technology is effective and efficient, informed by research and practice, and grounded in an understanding of the underlying technologies, their capabilities and the situations into which they are placed.” "We do this by improving practice, promoting research, and influencing policy, through bringing together practitioners, researchers, and policy makers in learning technology.”
Q: What is ALT?
Q5: What advice do
It’s very easy. I sent an email to Perusall and they sent me guidelines, which are very clear. Now at PolyU we have a lot of support from EDC and ITS that is helping us to integrate Perusall with Blackboard. Another team is working on how to link it up with Blackboard Grade Center. Perusall also has a good relationship with book publishers and it’s easy to import eBooks directly from them. Perusall is easy to try out and I think you’ll love it.
Perusall is very user friendly. My experience before that was with NB which still serves a purpose but is not so user friendly as it still takes time for instructors to analyse the students’ responses. But Perusall is great because it provides auto-grading and it also provides a ‘confusion report’. Just before a class I can print a confusion report to check what are the major confusions or most discussed topics.
That’s a good question. We are just starting but at Harvard and MIT they have many years’ worth of data – like auto-graded marks along with human marks – so they have plenty of data that they can input and put into statistics to know what the features of annotation are that predict quality in the marks of the annotation. It’s a kind of machine learning. So far we have done about 20 annotations and it seems pretty well matched but I think we still need to random check ourselves.
For more information for PolyU staff interested in Blackboard integration, please contact us at
Q3: Tell me about
you tell me what social annotation is?
Whenever students have any questions (about a reading activity) they can ask their peers, classmates, anyone who can help, so it’s not isolated learning. If they are forced to read something maybe they don’t like it – if they have a question in the middle and maybe they feel frustrated and stop reading it. But now with social annotation, once students have any questions they can stay with the document and hopefully somebody can answer, either peers or instructors.
you have for teachers who want to try social annotation?
your experience of using Perusall?
Q2: Why do you think this is a valuable learning activity?
Starting with social networks, nowadays people of any age like to have a more social experience when doing things and social annotation involves other people in your learning experience. Annotation is simple and we can do it on eBooks, pdfs and other documents online. So we combine them together and this is social annotation – different people online, with the same document that they can annotate together.
Q4: The auto-grading is based
Professor Winnie Yu spoke to the BOLT team about her experiences using social annotation
Social Annotation with Perusall
elearning@polyu.edu.hk
on artificial intelligence (AI). How accurate do you find its AI?
Q1: Professor Yu, can
arinna.lee@polyu.edu.hk
www.bolt.edu.hk
Find out more: or contact (ext.6539)
Mr. Darren HARBUTT Prof. Winnie YU Miss Arinna LEE Dr. Charlie YEUNG Miss Birley CHAN Mr. Anthony HO
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- BOLT Foundation Course Cohort 4 Module 1: starts online Monday 9 January. Find out more: https://www.bolt.edu.hk/course
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