Individual and team annotation effects on students' reading comprehension, critical thinking, and meta-cognitive skills

Tristan E. Johnson, Thomas N. Archibald, Gershon Tenenbaum

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

93 Scopus citations

Abstract

Many students enter college without the needed skills to be successful. Colleges and universities are seeking instructional interventions to address these needs. Various classes are leveraging web-based social media to provide new instructional technologies that will help students learn. This paper reports on two studies related to the potential of online social annotation for improving teaching and learning in second-semester Freshman English classes. The approach, referred to as the Social Annotation Model-Learning System (SAM-LS), combines various instructional strategies, team-based learning, and a social annotation computer-supported collaborative learning tool, HyLighter, to increase student engagement with selected essays and with classmates. SAM-LS stimulates students to actively monitor their thoughts and compare them to both peers and the instructor (or domain experts). Study 1 showed no significant difference between the SAM-LS approach and a control; however, results appear to be related to confounding factors. Study 2 showed that students achieve better outcomes on measures of reading comprehension and meta-cognitive skill, but not critical thinking, when SAM-LS activities include small team collaborations. The two studies suggest future directions for research and development of SAM-LS and the HyLighter tool.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1496-1507
Number of pages12
JournalComputers in Human Behavior
Volume26
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2010
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Computer-supported collaborative learning
  • Critical thinking
  • Learning technology
  • Meta-cognition
  • Reading comprehension
  • Small group collaboration
  • Social annotation
  • Web 2.0

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Individual and team annotation effects on students' reading comprehension, critical thinking, and meta-cognitive skills'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this