Utilizing Digital Annotation Tools for Collaborative Analysis of Literary Texts

For my project, I utilized two digital tools in my classes that fostered analysis of literary texts and generated student dialogues. One of the tools that I used was Hypothesis, an annotation tool that works through your browser and enables annotations of digital texts.

For example, I had students use Hypothesis to analyze adaptations of “Little Red Riding Hood”. Students looked for common themes, differences, moments that stood out to them and commented on each version of the text using Hypothesis. Students were also asked to respond to at least one annotation made by a peer. All annotations are viewable as soon as they are posted. The annotations were an effective way for students to engage in a dialogue about the assigned texts through both commenting on the adaptations of literary works as well as engaging in a dialogue with their peers about the works within the texts themselves. I would like to point out that there are additional features available in the LMS version of Hypothesis that I look forward to trying in the future. 

I also had students use the textual analysis tool Voyant to analyze adaptations of “Little Red Riding Hood”. This textual analysis tool enables students to analyze one text or a group of texts digitally. Texts can be uploaded to Voyant, copied and pasted in the submission space or by adding the url to access a digital copy of a text. Once the texts have been compiled into a corpus, students can access multiple Voyant tools to analyze the connections between words and word pairings in the texts. Some of these tools include word clouds, graphs, charts and bubblelines. One of the most vital features of Voyant is that actions in one tool can produce changes in others. The corpus can be shared via a link or embedded in an LMS. Students viewed the corpus in Voyant and utilized the interactive tools to talk about the connections between the texts. The Voyant tool enabled students to analyze the texts in multiple ways and collect data to support their analyses.