Supporting Online Learning and Teaching with Social Annotations

Online learning, with advantages over traditional in-person classes such as low cost and flexibility in time and space, has become ubiquitous. However, both learners and educators may face challenges caused by the remote nature of online learning. For students and instructors, the reduced presence may cause barriers, including but not limited to a weak sense of learning within a community, hard to effectively communicate and initiate meaningful interactions, difficulty to receive timely feedback, etc. In my doctoral study, I aim to build interactive systems to help learners and instructors overcome obstacles through sharing social annotations with peers and between different stakeholders.