MarkUP: Facilitating Reading Comprehension Through OnLine Collaborative Annotation

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Mark-UP Facilitating Reading Comprehension
Through On-Line Collaborative Annotation

• Mark McMahon Andrew Dunbar
• Edith Cowan University

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context

• 2nd year undergraduate students in Interface
  Information Design
• Weekly readings to support lectures and workshops
• Problems
• students dont like reading
• students arent efficient or effective readers
• how do learners transfer textual understandings
  to design activities?
• the role of metacognition

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metacognition

• awareness of ones own cognitive processes
• both a state and a process

Flow of Information
Control
Monitoring
nelson narens (1994)
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issues with metacognition

• inherently cognitive, but executive control still
  prone to multiple interpretations
• can metacognition be taught or is it acquired
  through experience over a long time?
• domain dependence vs domain independence

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a model for facilitating metacognition
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applying the model

• metacognitive regulation can be enhanced through
  self-monitoring strategy instruction
• But, what are the resources, activities, and
  supports facilitate the development of reflective
  and deliberate practice within a specific domain?

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general recommendations

• Blakey Spence (1990), Grabinger (1996)
• identifying what you know, and what you dont
  know
• keeping journals or logs
• learners self-managing their time and resources
• debriefing the thinking process
• self-evaluation through individual conferences,
  checklists etc
• Evaluating ones performance against goals,
  through an evaluative feedback loop

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reading comprehension

• inherent regulatory strategies
• can be activated through a reciprocal teaching
  approach
• dialogue between students and teacher, each
  taking a turn in the role of dialogue leader
• reciprocal interactions (one person acts in
  response to others)
• structured dialogue involving
• questioning, summarising, clarifying, predicting

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a metacognitive environment for reading
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summary of tools

• Annotations
• Links
• General prompted response
• Discussion
• Submit URL
• Post URL

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development technologies trialled

• Shockwave for Director 8
• PDF Xtra
• HTML members
• Macromedia Flash 5 with XML objects
• Adobe Acrobat 5 integrated commenting
• Acrobat 5 with embedded forms submitted to FMP5
  MySQL 3 database

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Final Approach

• PHP Database with MySQL
• open source
• flexible
• DHTML layers for in line annotations
• modifiable regions
• Browser friendly
• Plug-in free
• Integrative
• OSX server
• SCAMSyte

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Mark-UP
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Mark-UP
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Mark-UP
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Mark-UP
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Mark-UP
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Mark-UP
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Mark-UP
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Mark-UP
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initial instantiation

• Graduate students in Interactive Multimedia
• teaching evaluations for semester 1 2003
• engaging in these types of reading related
  activities is hard work!
• no need for so many different types of comments
  (particularly agree, disagree)
• what if I dont read like this?
• 50-50 split between students who found the tool
  useful or not
• some initial prototype issues did not promote
  confidence in the system
• dont like the icons

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current and future directions

• Current refinements
• refine readings and activities
• students can now rate websites posted
• changed icons
• streamlined hierarchy admin
• Future Directions
• private notes
• change the icons (again)
• tutor annotations

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questions and caveats

• Mark-UP is only a tool. Open to multiple forms of
  use and abuse
• designed to accompany rather than replace
  printable readings
• to what extent do you mandate its use? -
  assessable or non-assessable
• How to promote domain independent metacognition?

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QA