To Facilitate or to Participate? That is the Question. Impact of Instructor Responses in Online Social Annotation Discussions

One of the most prevalent ways of providing an engaging, flexible online environment for learners is through asynchronous online discussions embedded within the course design. While online discussions have been studied to support student active learning, reflective, higher-order and critical thinking, a number of factors like instructors’ facilitation and participation influence the design and implementation of a participatory environment. The past two decades have increasingly seen the exploration of other alternative online collaborative learning environments, one of which is Social Annotation tools. SA activities encourage social reading and meaningful and sustained discussion among learners and instructors during the knowledge construction stage. There is a gap in SA literature on instructor perspectives on how they facilitate and participate in discussions with students and how their role affects student participation, knowledge construction, and meaning-making. This paper, therefore, describes a study conducted to understand instructors’ perspectives in designing and implementing completely online undergraduate courses with the social annotation tool, Hypothes. The study focuses on understanding instructors’ perspectives on facilitation and participation strategies in influencing student interaction in the SA tool. Using a qualitative case study approach with in-depth interviews with five undergraduate online instructors, we explored how their participation (or the lack thereof) contributed to student discussions on the Hypothes.is platform. This study aims to explore instructor perspectives in-depth, to understand the reasons behind their designs, implementation, and pedagogical choices in facilitating online courses with social annotation.