How can we encourage student engagement with their academic reading? What role can technology play for campus-based and online students in supporting their academic skills development? What solutions are available and how effective are they in supporting students? These are some of the questions that are addressed in this cross-institutional study of social reading software, looking at the current market options (e.g. Talis Elevate, Leganto ‘Read and Respond’ and Hypothes.is) and the affordances of the supported technology. Informed by pilot studies with Talis Elevate conducted over the autumn and spring terms (2021-22 academic year) at the University of Leicester, and market research by the University of York, we use this evidence-base to appraise the current state of the market - reporting on technical integration issues with reading lists and VLE platforms, as well as desired functionality to empower students to create and manage critical discussions around target resources, ranging from key texts to images, with scope to annotate key texts and resources online. We then go on to discuss the results of pilot studies with Talis Elevate, focusing on academic engagement strategies to help students make best use of the software to develop their academic reading skills, as well as practical issues related to copyright controls and permissions.

1. Encouraging academic skills
development through social reading:
A critical review of digital solutions
and implementation strategies
ALT-C
Richard Walker, University of York
Samuel Parr, University of Leicester
6th September 2022

2. Today
 Social reading and collaborative
annotation defined
– Support from literature
 Collaborative Annotation
platform overview
 How to use collaboration
annotation in your teaching
– Recommendations and tips for
encouraging social reading in courses

3. What is social reading?
 Collaborative reading, where
students discuss their thoughts
and ideas about a resource
 Book groups and seminar
discussions

4. Collaborative Annotation
 Collaborative reading, where
students discuss their thoughts
and ideas about a resource
 Book groups and seminar
discussions
 Online through collaborative
annotation

5. Collaborative Annotation in Talis Elevate

6. Why is this relevant to HE?
 Students’ textual understanding and engagement
– Academics report that students have limited critical engagement in texts
– It is difficult to see or measure student engagement in course texts
before summative assessment
– Course reading can feel very separate from the wider learning journey,
particularly for non-core texts
 Community Building
– Community improves student academic and social achievement,
increases curricular integration, and increased satisfaction with learning
(Calderwood, 2000; Rovai, 2002; van Tyron & Bishop, 2009)
– Developing an online community can be challenging, and discussion
forums are often inadequate

7. How collaborative annotation might help
 Students’ textual understanding
– “Collaborative annotation tools capture students’ thinking and
processing in the moment, more closely mirroring the learning that one
might see in a face-to-face class when students discuss content with
their instructor and/or classmates” (Adams & Wilson, 2020)
– Provides opportunities for students to ask questions, discuss ideas, and
provide peer-to-peer learning
– Educators can see and measure engagement and understanding
 Community
– Provides a discussion forum that is a natural part of the student journey

8. Support from literature
 Limited amount of published research
 Focus on digital support for pre-class reading
assignments: an instructor-designed, flipped learning
approach (e.g. Miller et al., 2018)
 Social learning environments may support continuous
conversations between learners, enabling them to reflect
on target learning resources and build understanding of
key concepts (Crouch & Mazur, 2001)
 Li & Zhou (2021) found human to text interactivity in
social reading boosted students’ social presence
 Various case studies with some evidence of success…

9. Collaborative
Annotation Software

10. Talis Elevate
Pros:
 Easy-to-use social reading tool
for staff and students
 Allows annotation of documents,
images, and videos
 Some linkage to Talis Aspire
reading lists and VLEs (via LTI
integration), meaning you can
use Talis Aspire Copyright
Clearance
 Basic analytics functions
Cons:
 No groups functionality
 Analytics and linkage to Talis Aspire
and VLEs could be more advanced
 Access control issues, including:
– No external access options
– All academics can find and enrol
in each other’s modules
– Documents shared through links
are a bit clunky

11. Perusall
Pros:
 Established social reading
platform for HE
 Allows annotation of
documents, images, and videos
 Groups functionality
 Advanced analytics
 Free for educators
Cons:
 No linkage to reading lists
 Free for students, but asks them
to pay for additional content
 Academics responsible for
managing copyright (unless
students pay for texts in
Perusall)

12. hypothes.is
Pros:
 Allows annotation of web
pages and uploaded PDFs
 Groups functionality
 Free for educators
Cons:
 No video annotation
 No linkage to reading lists
 Students need to add a
Chrome extension to use
 Academics responsible for
managing copyright

13. ExLibris Leganto
Pros:
 ‘Read and Respond’ integrates with
LMS platforms (module site, Grade
Centre & reading list)
 Instructor can link to target pdf file
and present questions for
discussion
 Commenting function for students:
named or anonymous contributions
 Group work assignments supported
Cons:
 Students can’t set up
collaborative reading activities
– must be allocated a task by
instructor
 Unclear whether images / web
resources can be reviewed

14. Discounted Tools
 Word/Google Docs: Designed
primarily for collaborative editing,
rather than annotation
 NowComment: Well established,
but lacks integration with VLEs

15. Evidence from
Case Studies

16. University of Leicester – Talis Elevate
 Piloted Elevate to a module of
180 Bioscience students
 Students discussed 4 resources
asynchronously in Talis Elevate:
– 2 academic papers
– Module Description and Practical
Assessment Description

17. University of Leicester – Results
 91.6% of the cohort accessed Talis, but
only 18.3% of 180 students engaged to
make 83 discussion comments and 63
personal comments
 60% of comments were anonymous
 76% of all comments were questions to
the academic
 Discussion was shallow, with comments
rarely having more than one reply

18. University of Leicester – Results
 Limited evidence that collaborative
annotation encouraged active reading
 However, Talis Elevate was useful for
facilitating questions to academics
 Talis Elevate usage was much higher
than the module’s Blackboard
discussion forum (9 students making
22 comments overall)
 There were a number of issues to the
pilot design that made findings
unreliable. We are repeating the pilot
in Autumn 2022

19. University of Sussex – Talis Elevate
 Foundation Year Applied Psychology
2019-20 – 200 students
 Talis Elevate used for
five weekly readings
 40% of cohort engaged to make 400
responses and 1400 personal notes
 Anecdotally, student feedback was
very positive
 Usage decreased during Covid-19

20. Adams & Wilson (2020) – Perusall
 15 students engaged in one or two texts
per week on a distance learning course
 During the first reading, students
averaged nine texts interactions and
four to five peer interactions.
 Engagement increased through the
semester - students’ average text
interactions increased by 30% while
their peer interactions increased by 40%

21. Case Study Conclusions
 Social Reading platforms can provide more
natural discussion than VLE forums
 Social Reading platforms show some promise for
improving community and textual engagement
 Careful deployment and planning is crucial

22. Top Tips

23. Collaborative Annotation - Top Tips
1. Introduction:
– Introduce the social reading software to students at the start
of the module: demonstration & rationale
– Low-stakes, but used consistently throughout the module
2. Engagement:
– Target key texts and learning resources – central to module
– Scaffold engagement with social reading: modelling &
‘socialisation of learners’ (Walker & Baets, 2009)
– Post questions and discussion points to encourage
engagement. Then, as students grow in confidence, the
academic can let them lead discussions

24. Conclusions
 Social reading and collaborative
annotation can increase active
reading and engagement
 Using collaborative annotation
requires care and planning to
be effective
 Platforms exist, but copyright
and reading list synchronisation
are key issues needing
attention

25. Next Steps
 Another Talis Elevate Pilot with
three courses in Autumn 2022
 Work with vendors
 Developing knowledge of social
reading across UK HE institutions
 If you’d like to talk more or
collaborate, reach out to us at
richard.walker@york.ac.uk
sp812@leicester.ac.uk

26. References
Adams, B., & Wilson, N. S. (2020). Building Community in Asynchronous Online Higher
Education Courses Through Collaborative Annotation. Journal of educational technology
systems, 2020, Vol.49 (2), p.250-261.
Crouch, C., & Mazur, E. (2001). Peer instruction: ten years of experience and results.
American Journal of Physics, 69 (9). https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.1374249
Miller, K., Lukoff, B., King, G., & Mazur, E. (2018). Use of a social annotation platform for
pre-class reading assignments in a flipped introductory Physics class. Frontiers in Education.
07 March 2018. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2018.00008
Walker, R., & Baets, W. (2009). Instructional design for class-based and computer-mediated
learning: creating the right blend for student-centred learning. Applied e-learning and
e-teaching in higher education, eds R. Donnelly & F. McSweeney, Hershey: Information
Science Reference, pp. 241–261. doi: 10.4018/978-1-59904-814-7
Wu Li, Yuanyi Mao, & Liuning Zhou (2021) The Impact of Interactivity on User Satisfaction in
Digital Social Reading: Social Presence as a Mediator, International Journal of Human–
Computer Interaction. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2021.1898850