Course Trailer

ENGL 2507: Enriching and expanding seminar discussions with annotation

An English professor specializing in both early modern literature and educational development offers a seminar driven by digital assignments and collaborations to explore classic texts in new ways.

  • Course: ENGL 2507: Identity, Selfhood, and Otherness in Renaissance Drama
  • Instructor: Adriana Streifer
  • Enrollment: 18 students
  • Format: Synchronous
    • Electronic resources assignments
    • Interactive class discussions
    • Collaborative annotation

Course content and activities: UVACollab

Adriana's course site in UVACollab houses her course content and activities. A customized collection of folders in the Resources tool provides easy access to important materials such as assignment descriptions and examples, readings, films, and more. The Assignments tool offers additional flexibility by allowing students to submit their work electronically for review, and by notifying them when scores and feedback are available.

Student collaboration: Zoom

After verifying that her students were able to attend synchronous sessions, Adriana created a series of meetings in Zoom, readily accessible through the Online Meetings tool in her course site. The option to enable or disable video is a helpful option for students who have limited internet connectivity, or who may not wish to display themselves or their surroundings on screen. Meeting recordings are archived in the Online Meetings tool for review, which encourages retention of important concepts and assists any students who happened to be absent.

Student engagement: NowComment

Adriana uses NowComment for collaborative annotation of texts before, during, and after class—allowing students to analyze the assigned literature, interact with their colleagues, and inform and shape the group discussion in ways that transcend the boundaries of the traditional seminar room.