Designing instruction using layering services

I have updated my Primer explaining the use of online services that are available to develop instructional content from existing online web pages and videos. The inexpensive resource explains the capabilities of these design services for adding elements to existing content so that the existing content is more appropriate for instructional use. The Primer explains how best to make use of the elements that can be added and provides tutorials on setting up and using these services. The Kindle book is available from Amazon.

More and more online content is being assigned as resources for learning. Designing Instruction Using Layering Services explores how prompts, annotations, highlights, questions and other adjunct devices can be added to existing online resources by both educators and learners to improve the understanding, application and retention of this content. This short ebook explains proven tactics for developing skill in the use of the recommended study strategies and identifies and explains the use of several existing online services for developing web pages and online video as instructional content. This book is focused on the use of these services in K12 classrooms.

I recently created a video briefly explaining how one of these design services works. Watching the video offers an example of the type of service covered in the Primer.

Annotation Tools – Resource for college instructors

I have not written about layering opportunities for some time. I just encountered a site focused on the use of layering tools in college classes – Annotation Tools. The site offers several different categories of information – tool descriptions, ideas for learning activities, and some research.

Annotation Studio

I have used this blog on several occasions to provide tutorials on several online services that could be used to implement the instructional strategies I outline in my book “Layering for Learning“. The book has a very specific focus – educator amplification of online resources (video, web pages) – to create better learning experiences for students. An important focus here is that the content comes from a third party (or at least that is what is assumed) and the methods do not violate the copyrights of the original creators. So, educators can make use of YouTube videos and web content they did not author.

Many of the tactics I cover in the book and in my free online resources could be applied to other content. For example, Google docs allow peer editing, commenting and the opportunity for educators to distribute content they have available with overlays of comments and questions.

The Annotation Studio Digital Humanities project from MIT is an online option developed more specifically within the framework of educational applications I outline in my book. It is specific to content uploaded by educators and so is different than the approach I have described in my own work.

It is important to me that I recommend tactics that have demonstrated value. My own approach relies on the work of educational researchers. The Humanities project is less based in quantitative research and focuses on the argumentation style of those from the humanities. MIT has generated a White Paper that describes Annotation studio, provides a tutorial on the service, and provides additional comment justifying such activities that may interest educators. The program was developed at the university level, but has been used in high schools.

Justifying layering

I have this personal expectation that may annoy others. When I propose a learning activity, I feel I should explain why it works and what need it meets. This is kind of the way researchers look at application issues. I understand that technology offers some very interesting possibilities, but there should be a logical justification for why possibilities are implemented.

The following is a video I created to accompany the series of posts and a book on Layering for learning. The previous posts have mainly outlined the learning activities that can be applied with layering techniques and provided tutorials for several layering services. You can locate the previous posts using the layering tag associated with this post. This post is more about justifying these techniques.

Exploring MoocNote

I just finished a couple of brief tutorials exploring the potential of online video layering service MoocNote. This free service allows the addition of comments, questions, and external links to existing online video. The service allows the annotated videos to be organized for viewing by designated groups and is perfectly suited for designing instructional content for students of any age.

Tutorials

Online annotation is controversial?

I have written a lot lately about an instructional tactic I call layering (search this blog for the layer tag). What I mean by layering is the use of a service that allows an educator or designer to add elements such as highlights, questions or annotations on top of an existing website or online video. Just to be clear because this issue bears on the following comments, the way this work is that the designer enters the address of the content to be commented to a different service that requests the content from the original provider, allows the educator/designer or student to make additions on top of the original content, and saves a way to represent this combination. There is no actual change to the original content, the original content is served each time the composite is requested, all content including ads is served, and the composite is only visible to viewers requesting the content through the layering service.

My writing has focused on the educational potential of such services. The idea is that much of the content existing on the Internet was not designed as an instructional product. Educators/designers can add elements that help learners process this content for understanding and retention. In addition, it can be beneficial for learners to make their own additions (much as you might do while reading a book) for personal use or sharing with peers.

It is important to recognize that the developers of these layering services may not have these exact goals in mind or they may see their services in a broader way. I tend to think in terms of educators and students. The developers of these services may have a perspective closer to “annotate the web”. The idea is each of us can markup public documents as a way to provide input or challenge to the positions taken by original authors.

What has surprised me is that there is a growing backlash against these layering services. I can kind of understand the position of those who are concerned because it seems similar to the anger present in those who resent viewers blocking the ads inserted in content. I can understand the position – you do not have to view the content I created so please view it as I intended.

Another way to understand this backlash is to note that many bloggers or YouTube creators may turn off comments. Some may not want to be criticized, but many have experienced attacks or negative comments that go well beyond just disagreeing with positions taken.

I am listing two sources explaining the opposition to group annotation. One from the Chronicle of Higher Education and one from blogger Audrey Watters. I always recommend that my readers use the links I provide in case my summary of the positions taken by others are simplistic or simply wrong.

There is something kind of interesting about the way we write and link in addressing this specific situation. I see the educational value in layering and in a way I am suggesting that layering should be continued. In a way, I am doing something very similar to what layering accomplishes although in a less precise way. I am taking the work of another and arguing that the position taken fails to see another perspective. I would not have been allowed to do this as an annotation or as a comment, but I am doing pretty much the same thing. I also remember in the early days of the web that some objected to others linking to their content.

Watters blog

Chronical of Higher Ed article

I hope there is a solution to this dilemma. It makes no sense to me that the connection of ideas on the web would require the consent of all involved. This is not the way the web has evolved and it is not the way those of us who have worked in academia have always done our work. We cite and connect, but we do not seek permission. Audrey Watters mentions a script she uses to block a specific annotation service (hypothes.is). If this type of thing were widely available, it might be one solution.

I do see public annotation (when connected to the same layering service) and educational layering (offering the composite to specific students) as different. Like so many tools for working online, the same tool can be used in both ways and I guess flexibility can lead to problems.

Something for the secondary educators

I have a sense, that for one reason or another, educators who work at the secondary level make less use of technology in their teaching. I reach this conclusion from the active participation of teacher conversations I observe online. What I observe and what is actually happening in classrooms may differ or what I observe may be accurate. Many may assume that writing using a device or searching online to acquire the information needed for an assignment meet expectations for tech integration and such activities are so common that sharing that your students do such things is not worth doing.

I am assuming for the purpose of this post that secondary students do make less innovative use of technology because I want to propose an innovation that fits naturally with the heavier emphasis many secondary courses place on the consumption of content. I believe that the personal processing of content is an important life skill and while the format of this information may change as it exists in a digital age, reading, studying, deep reading, media literacy or whatever variant is in vogue does change the importance of developing content processing skills for the present and future work of learning.

Here is the opportunity I think secondary educators are missing and that could be productively integrated onto the existing heavy emphasis on content processing. Onto is the word I prefer to “into” because I think of the change as “layering” opportunities on top of existing content. Some of the layering opportunities are familiar to content processing at the college level or outside of academic settings – e.g., highlighting, notetaking. Some of the opportunities we see applied by content providers, but seldom find ways to apply ourselves (as teachers or students) – integrated questions, suggestions for connections or perspective. Some of these opportunities we apply to students but fail to show them how to apply these opportunities themselves and with peers – any of the tactics I have mentioned.

I have been writing about these tactics for about a year now – visit my other blog and use the built-in Google search capability to search for “layer”.

Another source for a subset of these ideas has been pushed by the developers of an online highlighting and commenting service called hypothes.is. Here is a conference presentation sponsored by this group that provides background and examples of the applications they propose.

Secondary educators and tech facilitators – take a look.

Public highlighting and annotation

My personal take on tools for adding various types of annotations and prompts to existing online resources has emphasized the educational potential for teachers and students. I see these tools as ways to convert information resources (web pages, online video) into instructional resources.

Many of the tools I have reviewed in writing about the potential for education were developed by individuals with a different vision. They view their tools as a way for individuals to contribute to the public discussion on important issues or as a form of curation. I suppose either of these visions might be considered a way to influence learning on a broader scale than might occur to K-12 educators. The following are my own thoughts on the possibilities these tools allow.

Annotation as a form of commenting:

The tools (I will offer a couple of links at the end of this post) I have in mind might be understood as providing an improved or at least more precise form of commenting. Some online resources offer a place at the conclusion of the post to add a comment. If the service allows and the author is willing, readers have access to a text box that allows input and then appends this input to the end of the original post or possibly linked to a previous comment. This sounds great, but as most familiar with social services understand the opportunity is often abused as a way to garner personal attention or to harass the author. Some services allow comments to be moderated so the original author has the opportunity to approve comments before the comments become part of the public post.

The form of annotation I am describing does not fix this problem and it may make it worse. What it does to potentially improve the process is to make commenting more specific. The highlights and comments (or similar additions) are inserted (layered) on the existing document (highlights on top, other additions typically linked to the side). Think of this as a way to identify the precise existing content that has generated the addition - support, objection, additional information, external link, etc.

On a grand scale (many participants), this could create quite a mess. However, the value of such public systems improves as the developers find ways to embrace multiple contributors in a useful way, additions can be shared with designated users only, or the number of participants is not large. These services typically have some form of on/off switch - you can turn the service on to make contributions or to observe what additions have been added by others or you can leave the service off to see a clean copy.

Highlighting as a form of curation:

A major issue of online resources for many is that there is just too much. Curation offers a group approach to deal with great quantity. For example, Twitter is often used to identify useful “reads” others might find worth their time. This form of curation (see Nuzzel as build on top of this model) reduces the number of articles, but not the amount of content per article. Now, imagine others you trust have gone through content you might find valuable and highlighted what they think is most important. You may have experienced such a think purchasing a used college textbook or using the public highlight feature available when reading a Kindle book. The idea is that you can skim and use the existing highlights to make decisions what you might consider reading more carefully.

Is this a good idea? I would refer you to your own experiences with used textbooks. You may have found the highlights to be helpful and you might have found the highlights to be distracting. I know there has been research with have been described as “experts” (expert note takers, highlighters), but this may or may not apply to the content you would experience. Kindle has a way of aggregating highlighting so you see only the most frequently highlighted material. To my knowledge, this has yet to be tried with the type of services I am describing here.

Again, if you have installed the extension in your browser, this model of curation can be turned off or on so you as a reader have control.

One issue may have occurred to you as you read this content. If you are the content creator, you really have no control of whether others add highlights or notes to your material. This is the case and this situation might be imagined as more traditional commenting that cannot be turned off and is not moderated. Just to be clear, these additions do not actually modify the author’s content, but might be understood as a layer added on top. The author presents content as intended and this content is there without any changes for viewers who have not employed one of the services I have described. I guess I will leave it at that for you to evaluate.

Resources:

Highly - a tool for highlighting the web (Highly explains its own vision)

Hypothes.is - highlight and annotate

What makes content a learning resource - part 5

This is the final post in my series concerning the modification of content as a learning resource by layering activities on the original content. My final post offers a demonstration of two services. I have saved this demonstration because prioritizing the rationale for such services and the tactics for using such services must be considered for the services to be effective. I am working on additional tutorials/demonstrations that are available from my “layering” pages.

What makes content a learning resource - part 4

Video annotation

More and more online video is being used in K-12 classrooms. This may be the case because educators want to expand the exposure to content sources beyond the traditional textbook. It may be because some educators are exploring flipping their classrooms and are creating the videos themselves to replace presentations they would offer during class time. It may simply be because educators find interesting and informative YouTube resources they can make available to their students.

With the exception of educator created video which would likely be developed with an understanding of the target student audience and an understanding of specific curriculum goals, the video content to be assigned could very well be an example fitting more toward the content rather than instructional resource end of the continuum I have been describing. Certainly, educators could preface exposure to the video with guidelines and follow up with a discussion. However, the layering process I have been describing can be applied to video and allows more immediate and embedded techniques for influencing productive cognitive behaviors.

I am guessing that annotating video is a more challenging concept for most educators than annotating static multimedia. We all have at least observed and probably have participated in highlighting and annotating static content and using these additions as part of the process of review. I would be the first to admit that tools for the addition of prompts to video is less well developed. I assume that part of this lag can be attributed to technical challenges, but I also believe that there has simply been less interest in the educational use of video. Tools are available and will grow in sophistication as interest in making use of video grows.

The method of association between original and added content must differ with video. With static online multimedia, the learner scrolls through the content and added content scrolls along wherever inserted. With video, adding content on top of a constantly changing display that appears in the same location presents problems. The solution has been to use the timeline for the video to integrate the moving imagery and content that appears in an adjacent window. You use the timeline when you scrub through video to move ahead or back rather than allow the video to run in real time. Ideally, the content related to the video should pop up in the adjacent window shortly before one reaches the related point in the video and should either stop the video at an appropriate point or allow the user to turn on and off pausing the video at those points when additional information has been displayed. The online services I have reviewed have yet to achieve this level of sophistication and learners pretty much have to scroll through the adjacent content window to locate added content. This is not a problem with short videos, but it is limiting when working with longer presentations.

How can layering improve the experience of learning from video? I would suggest that most of the prompt categories I outline in Layering for Learning apply. For example, a comment at the beginning can establish context and activate existing knowledge. Comments can be interjected to bring attention to particularly important points. Questions can be added to check for understanding and when necessary encourage review. These are traditional design tactics that classroom educators can apply.

The next and final segment in this series will provide a couple of examples of existing services for layering.

What makes content a learning resource - part 3

Layering for online media

In the first two installments of this series, I attempted to provide a background for the concept of layering suggested tasks on experiences as a way to convert content (or experiences) into learning resources. This post will address just what some of these tasks might be.

To be clear, I have suggested that layering could be a general way to understand what is added to content/experiences to improve the likelihood of learner understanding and application. Even instructional designs such as project and problem-based learning are tasks added on top of content/experiences in order to improve the likelihood of learner understanding and application. My interest is in promoting the more familiar use of layering as has long been applied with traditional paper content and can productively be applied to online content (web pages/web video).

So, let us begin with what I am guessing is familiar. As a college student and perhaps as a professional, many of us used and continue to use some paper textbooks. Often, to improve the processing of this content for immediate understanding and in preparation for later review (studying), many of us added highlighting to this content and perhaps added notes in the margins. We may have noted “key ideas” available at the beginning of the chapter to activate existing knowledge and prioritized our attention to the chapter that followed. We may have used “boxed” recommendations for application embedded within the chapter and used questions at the end of the chapter to check for understanding. All of these additions contributed by the designer or that we added might be considered layered on the basic content in an effort to manipulate the effectiveness and efficiency of our cognitive activity (reading, studying).

If you make use of ebooks, you may continue to use many of these add-ons. You can highlight and annotate. The digitization of this content and the online connection even allows more powerful uses of these tactics. With Kindle books, you can identify the content most commonly highlighted by other readers (a form of group intelligence) and you can search your own additions for a book allowing for more efficient location of your own ideas than would be the case attempting to locate what you had highlighted or annotated in a paper book.

The core idea I am promoting in Layering for Learning is that as a teacher/designer and as a student, tools are available for adding a variety of devices for encouraging effective cognitive activity on top of web pages and web video. These tools are available now. I want to suggest what some of these additions can be. Not all tools offer all of these additions, but all of these additions are available.

• Highlighting
• Annotations (note taking)
• Questions
• Invitations to discuss
• Prompts – suggestions, external links, reminders, added information (images, text, video)

Perhaps you expected a longer list. Recognize that the items on this list are versatile and pretty much allow a teachers/designers to extend existing web content as if they were the original author. Often these tools are available both to the teacher/designer and student and allow information to be passed in both directions. For examples, educators might highlight key points to make certain students recognize these points or have students highlight and see what students see as most important. As was suggested in the second installment of this series, mature learners apply some of these techniques on their own and yet students receive little assistance in learning to take effective notes, to use highlighting effectively, or to generate questions for personal review. The bi-directional shareability of these tools allows expert modeling, peer sharing, and the evaluation of student tool implementation.

Video layering does not allow all of the enhancements mentioned here, but more may be possible than you realize. I will describe video layering in the next post.