Using social annotation to construct knowledge with others: A case study across undergraduate courses

Introduction

Online conversation—as with chat rooms or discussion forums—is a ubiquitous practice with societal implications (Paulus and Wise 2019). In educational contexts, online discussion emerged alongside popular online bulletin boards in the mid-1990s, and written digital discourse is now an essential feature of contemporary educational technologies, such as learning management systems (LMS), discussion boards, and blogs (Weller 2020). Online discussion allows students to converse about topics pertinent to course content (Loncar, Barrett, and Liu 2014), is often asynchronous (Sheail 2018), and encourages learners’ participation at their own pace. Asynchronous online discussion is a tenet of social learning in digital environments (Hill, Song, and West 2009) with research indicating such discourse enables social and collaborative learning (Chan and Pow 2020; Hambacher, Ginn, and Slater 2018; McMahon 1997).

The growth of asynchronous online discussion in digital education presents both opportunities and challenges. For learners, the benefits of online discussion include social knowledge construction (KC) (Eryilmaz et al. 2013; Kent, Laslo, and Rafaeli 2016), meaningful dialogue with information shared and negotiated (Gao, Zhang, and Franklin 2013; Wise, Hausknecht, and Zhao 2014), collaboration with peers (Pratt and Back 2013), and reflection (Truhlar, Walter, and Williams 2018). Online discussion can improve student learning processes and outcomes (Hambacher, Ginn, and Slater 2018; Kent, Laslo, and Rafaeli 2016). Alternatively, online discussion has been associated with low levels of student participation (Aloni and Harrington 2018), instructor bias (Baker et al. 2018), and non-substantive learner interaction (Hambacher, Ginn, and Slater 2018), perhaps due to the imposition of discussion structure and order (Gao, Zhang, and Franklin 2013). Indeed, the “dreaded threaded” discussion has been a trope of unsatisfying and unproductive online learning for at least two decades (Chabon, Cain, and Lee-Wilkerson 2001). The respective benefits and challenges of online discussion motivates additional research on how text-based, asynchronous online discourse can productively promote learners’ interaction, collaboration, and reflection in digital learning environments.

Given the ubiquity and timeliness of asynchronous online discussion, particularly in higher education (Bettinger et al. 2017), our study examines undergraduate student participation in social annotation (SA) as a form of online discussion. Specifically, we studied how peer-to-peer dialogue via SA contributed to KC activities in multiple courses from different disciplines. We first reviewed literature about SA and KC, highlighting the relevance of this relationship to online discussion and learning. We then present a case study of KC activities and patterns in 2,121 annotations written by students from three undergraduate courses at a Canadian university. We present findings about: a) The discursive, or peer-to-peer, characteristics of student SA; b) the prevalence of KC activities evidenced in student SA; and c) patterns of KC activities in student SA, including a comparison among courses. Our discussion considers the strengths and limitations of this study, the social qualities and value of student participation in SA, and implications for the use of SA as asynchronous online discussion.

SA, collaboration, and KC

In this study, we embrace a sociocultural stance toward learning (Gutiérrez and Rogoff 2003; John-Steiner and Holdbrook 1996). We extend computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) research that considers cognition a socially-situated, group accomplishment (Enyedy and Hoadley 2006; Stahl 2017). We recognize communication, whether spoken or written, as central to the social construction of reality (McMahon 1997); consequently, social and discursive activities like thinking aloud, asking questions, and providing explanation promote meaningful learning (King 2007). We understand collaboration as a “social contract” (Dillenbourg 1999) reflecting shared situations and interactions, as well as orchestrated participation in online learning (i.e., Chen et al. 2018). Our orientation to cognition, communication, and collaboration positions us to study how SA as online discussion can encourage engagement in structured dialogue and shared epistemic practices (Kalir 2020a; Eryilmaz et al. 2013).

Methods

This study was conducted using data collected for the assessment of students as part of their regular academic work and, as such, was exempt from ethics board review according to Article 2.5 of the Canadian Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans.

This research employed a single-case study design (Yin 2009) at a Canadian university between January and April 2019. Seven faculty from multiple disciplines at the undergraduate and graduate levels were invited to integrate SA as online discussion into their courses using Hypothesis (Hypothes.is, RRID:SCR_000430) (https://web.hypothes.is/), an open-source technology that enables SA and which has been widely studied in higher education (e.g., Chen 2019; Goller et al. 2021; Sprouse 2018; Seatter 2019). Faculty were provided with technical and pedagogical support by the research team.

All seven courses used SA for asynchronous online discussion in some capacity. Three were selected for this study: Publishing Studies (PUB); Gerontology (GERO); and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies (GSWS). These courses were selected using the following inclusion criteria to assure the quality and consistency of data: 1) Similar course-level (upper-level undergraduate); 2) High student engagement with SA as evidenced by number of annotations; and 3) Close contact between the instructor of each course and the research team.

As detailed in our related research about student perceptions of SA (Kalir et al. 2020), these three courses differed in terms of instructor pedagogy, enrolled students, and the use of SA for online discussion. PUB organized class sessions into two components—a lecture followed by face-to-face discussion—and required that students make at least two annotations on each reading before class to receive a 15% participation grade. GERO sessions typically started with student face-to-face discussion and then transitioned to a traditional lecture. SA represented 15% of students’ final grades and was assessed using a rubric that included engagement with peers and annotation consistency, quantity, and originality. GSWS sessions relied on a combination of lectures and seminars; participation accounted for 20% of students’ final grade and included SA. Table 1 summarizes student engagement with SA in the three courses.

Results

Our study examined the use of SA for online discussion in three different undergraduate courses and features three complementary sets of findings. To address RQ1, we report characteristics associated with student SA by categorizing the types of annotation written by students and identifying the prevalence of discursive—or peer-to-peer—threads composed via SA. In response to RQ2, we present quantitative summaries of KC activities evidenced in student SA. A third set of findings addressing RQ3 details the patterns of KC activities most frequently observed within students’ SA and identifies how patterns of KC activities within discursive threads differed across courses.

Characteristics of discursive SA

We first report three types of annotation written by students to identify the basic discursive characteristics of SA for online discussion. This first set of findings distinguishes individual annotations from those that were part of discursive threads. A thread is an instance in which one students’ annotation elicited at least one reply from a peer (Figure 1). As reported in Table 3, all student SAs were categorized as: a) an individual annotation that did not appear in a thread and elicited no peer response, henceforth referred to as no-thread; b) an annotation that elicited at least one peer response, referred to as top-of-thread; and c) an annotation reply that developed discursive interaction among peers. In reporting our findings, it is important to recall that even no-thread SA had social qualities; this category of annotation was written for group-level participation in each course and was visible to peers throughout online discussion activities.

Figure 1. Sample SA thread (student names removed) with one top-of-thread annotation and two replies.

SA, social annotation.

Table 3. Categories of student SA by course.

Course	No-thread	Top-of-thread	Reply	Total
GERO	402	135	212	749
GSWS	161	37	56	254
PUB	1,056	30	32	1,118
Total	1,619	202	300	2,121

Across all three courses, 76% (1,619 annotations) of student SA received no peer response and were not part of any threaded discussion (no-thread). A total of 24% (502) of all SA appeared in a thread, with 10% (202) of annotations as top-of-thread and 14% (300) as a reply. In GERO, nearly half (46%) of student SA appeared in threads, including 135 top-of-thread annotations and 212 replies. In GSWS, just over one third (36%) of student SA appeared in threads, with 37 top-of-thread annotations and 56 replies. And in PUB, only 6% of student SA were in threads, with 30 top-of-thread annotations and 32 replies.

Frequency of KC across courses

Whether or not student SA appeared in a discursive thread, we found that 71% (1,511) of all annotations included a single KC activity, 18% (380) included two KC activities, and 5% (105) included three or more KC activities. A total of 6% of all annotations (125) did not include evidence of any KC activity. Across courses, the most common KC activity was interpretation: 40% of all annotations (1,051) included interpretation in the form of an inference, conclusion, or summary of the text. Examples of interpretation included a GERO student who wrote “[i] t seems that this is a big problem with categorizing but is it possible to avoid ‘othering’? to me, it seems we can not avoid it in research because that is how we can compare and contrast findings to present conclusions” [SA725], as well as a GSWS student who observed, “I think this is a really great point for illustrating how media coverage isn’t just about representation, but about a lack of representation” [SA050].

As summarized in Figure 2 (Morales, Fleerackers, Alperin 2022), elaboration was the second most common KC activity featured in all student SA, appearing in 20% of all annotations (532). For example, a student in PUB wrote “[t] his is similar to what we see with the Internet and the use of tools like Facebook or Twitter or blogging. The Internet is fairly accessible to a large percentage of the world where anyone can post anything they want to” [SA917]. Across our study sample, other KC activities present in students’ SA included clarification (13% of all annotations), asking a question (12%), consensus building (8%) and providing support (6%). Conflict was the least common KC activity across courses and occurred in less than 1% of annotations, indicating that students may have avoided contrasting points of views when writing SA for online discussion.

Figure 2. Aggregated distribution of KC activities across courses.

KC, knowledge construction.

The distribution of KC activities within online discussion further demonstrated the prevalence of interpretation and elaboration in student SA. As indicated in Figure 3, interpretation accounted for 58% of the KC activities within PUB and over one third of KC activities in GERO and GSWS. Elaboration occurred in 26% of the KC activities of GERO and GSWS, and 24% of KC activities in PUB. The prevalence of other KC activities differed among the three courses. Students in GERO, for example, more frequently included consensus building in their SA during online discussion (“I agree, this question is very subjective but I wonder if that is the point for this study” [SA293]), whereas few annotations from PUB included consensus building or support. Results further suggest that the KC activities of asking a question and providing clarification appeared in students’ online discussion with about the same frequency across all three courses.

Figure 3. Distribution of KC activities per course.

KC, knowledge construction; PUB, Publishing Studies; GERO, Gerontology; GSWS, Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies.

KC patterns among discursive SA

Our third set of findings detail patterns of KC activities within discursive, or peer-to-peer, SA and includes a comparison of differences among courses. To address RQ3, we first recall that over three-quarters of student SA in this study (76%) received no peer response and were not part of threaded discussion (no-thread annotation). Figure 4 illustrates the distribution and prevalence of seven KC activities (as detailed in RQ2) by SA category (as described in RQ1).

Figure 4. Distribution of KC activities per SA category.

KC, knowledge construction; SA, social annotation.

Across courses, four KC activities were predominantly concentrated in annotations that were not part of a thread: Interpretation (with 79% of the 1,051 annotations evidencing interpretation found in no-thread annotations); elaboration (76% of 532 annotations); clarification (89% of 338 annotations); and asking a question (70% of 320 annotations). Among these four most prominent KC activities, less than one-third of student SA that included a question was discursive, only about one-quarter evidencing interpretation or elaboration was discursive, and just one in ten annotations that provided clarification were discursive. In PUB, for example, in which 94% of student SAs were not in threads, prominent KC activities were interpretation (52% of 1,056 no-thread annotations), elaboration (21%), clarification (15%), and asking a question (12%). In GERO, the course with the lowest percentage of no-thread annotation (54%), prominent KC activities within this category included interpretation (36% of 402 no-thread annotations), elaboration (26%), and clarification (25%). Similarly, in GSWS—in which approximately two-thirds of student SA were no-thread—the most frequent KC activities in this subset were interpretation (40% of 161 no-thread annotations) and elaboration (29%).

Students’ KC activities also occurred in the 24% of SA that were discursive and located within threads as either top-of-thread or a reply. Four of the same five KC activities found among no-thread annotation were also identified, across all three courses, and with approximately the same frequency, in annotations that began threads: Interpretation, in 8% of 1,051 annotations evidencing interpretation; elaboration (11% of 532 annotations); clarification (9% of 338 annotations); and asking a question (14% of 320 annotations).

As previously shown in Figure 4, all seven KC activities were found in students’ replies to peers. Three KC activities were almost exclusively discursive, appearing only in student replies: consensus building (with 100% of the 198 annotations coded for consensus occurring in replies); support (99% of 148 annotations); and conflict (100% of 18 annotations). Some KC activities were infrequently evident in replies, such as clarification (2% of 338 annotations).

A further analysis of peer-to-peer online discussion in GERO, GSWS, and PUB reveals course-level patterns of KC activity in students’ discursive SA. Table 4 reports the percentage of annotations that contained evidence of each KC activity among annotations in threads—either as top-of-thread or as a reply—for each of the three courses. In both GERO and GSWS, prominent KC activities that appeared in top-of-thread SA included interpretation and elaboration. Interpretation was also the most common KC activity among top-of-thread SA in PUB. Across courses, interpretation, consensus building, and support were the three KC activities that more frequently appeared in replies. Overall, the three courses showed relatively similar patterns of KC activities among SA threads.

Table 4. Percentage, by course, of discursive SA with evidence of KC activities.

Course	SA Category	Clarification	Conflict	Consensus building	Elaboration	Interpretation	Question	Support
GERO	Top-of-thread	3%	0%	0%	6%	8%	6%	0%
	Reply	0%	2%	26%	9%	18%	6%	16%
GSWS	Top-of-thread	5%	0%	0%	9%	10%	4%	0%
	Reply	1%	0%	18%	7%	13%	7%	26%
PUB	Top-of-thread	3%	0%	0%	7%	20%	4%	0%
	Reply	3%	4%	19%	4%	16%	4%	16%

Two examples illustrate course-level patterns of KC present in students’ discursive SA, specifically interpretation and elaboration appearing atop threads followed by consensus building and additional interpretation in replies. One GERO student’s top-of-thread annotation (coded for both interpretation and elaboration) noted: “I was surprised that so many people disagree with improving the quality of life for immigrant seniors. The commenters are ‘othering’ and blaming the immigrants for not adapting to ‘Canadian culture.’ It is a sad reality that people believe this, especially since Canada was colonized by immigrants” [SA624]. A peer’s reply included consensus building and interpretation: “Canadian culture is very diverse - agreed! I feel this is also the reason that everyone needs to compromise to come up with a sustainable solution for all because it’s near impossible to cater to all the specific/individualized needs of such a diverse society” [SA587]. In PUB, one top-of-thread annotation that demonstrated interpretation stated: “Mentors and role models for diversity are so important in the workplace. When people trying to break into the publishing world see others succeeding that they can identify with, they may be inspired and more confident to chase after their goals” [SA274]. In response, a peer annotation featured consensus building and interpretation: “I agree. To add to your point, connections are so important in the job market now. To get into an industry, it seems like you need to know someone. If the industry is dominated by white people, and those people only are connected to other white people, then it would be hard for people of other backgrounds to get a foot in the door” [SA171].

Discussion

This descriptive study of three undergraduate courses from different disciplines at one university examined how student participation in asynchronous online discussion via SA contributed to KC activities. Our study builds on research about online discussion in higher education (i.e., Chen et al. 2018; Sun and Gao 2017) and extends insight from CSCL literature regarding the role of social learning technologies to enable learner cognition, communication, and collaboration (i.e., Chan and Pow 2020; King 2007). From this stance, SA—as a popular approach to online discussion (Allred, Hochstetler, and Goering 2020; Zhu et al. 2020)—was studied because it allowed students to add interactive notes to shared digital texts, anchor discussion in meaningful social contexts (Gao, Zhang, and Franklin 2013), and make their thinking visible and responsive to peers (Kalir and Garcia 2019; Marshall and Brush 2004). It has been nearly a decade since Novak et al. (2012) encouraged investigation about the promises and limitations of SA across varied higher education learning environments and among diverse groups of learners. While subsequent research has documented SA as productively mediating collaborative dialogue and learning (Brown and Croft 2020; Wranovix and Isbell 2020), only a small subset of CSCL literature details the intersection of SA practices and KC activities. In this discussion we: Address the contributions of this exploratory case study, with attention to the strengths and limitations of our research design and context; consider the discursive qualities and social value of student SA as participation in KC activities; and present methodological and instructional implications for SA as asynchronous online discussion.

The design of our study included multiple features that strengthened the relevance of this case for researchers interested in online discussion and CSCL constructs like KC. First, we expanded on a small but important literature that examines KC activities as enabled by SA (Eryilmaz et al. 2013; Plevinski et al. 2017; Zarzour and Sellami 2017). Whereas previous studies examined student KC within a single discipline, our case is the first instance to document undergraduate students’ KC via SA across three disciplines and does so with an SA corpus larger than that of prior studies. Second, we studied KC activities made visible by the SA technology Hypothesis, which strengthens our study by making use of a SA technology that has been both widely studied and widely adopted by global educational institutions (https://web.hypothes.is/blog/our-view-from-20-million-annotations/). Third, our approach to data analysis borrowed from Plevinski et al.’ (2017) codebook to deductively identify seven KC activities in student SA. We hope our findings further establish these particular activities and definitions as the future benchmark when investigating SA for evidence of KC. A fourth strength of this case is its comprehensive account of students’ collaborative learning as aided by SA. Having previously reported how this sample of students perceived SA as a valuable contribution to their learning (Kalir et al. 2020), we can now pair prior insight with these findings about student participation in SA for online discussion. As research suggests asynchronous online discussion can be unsatisfying and unproductive (i.e., Aloni and Harrington 2018), our two studies jointly indicate that students find SA satisfying and can use it as a productive means to construct knowledge.

There are two limitations of our study design that other researchers of SA and collaborative learning should work to mitigate. Both concern the extent to which we were able to comprehensively document students’ discursive activities in context, a methodological challenge noted in the CSCL literature that reflects complex social, cultural, and cognitive qualities of group discourse as situated across meaning-making contexts (i.e., Arvaja 2011). First, despite frequent coordination with participating faculty we had limited access to on-the-ground and online learning environments. Accordingly, we were unable to document via direct observation how SA was introduced to students as an approach to online discussion, nor were we able to observe how SA activities were orchestrated in coordination with other synchronous course activities (i.e., Zhu, Shui, and Chen 2020). A second limitation concerned unanticipated technical challenges that constrained our ability to document with nuance the online discursive context within which KC activities occurred. While Hypothesis SA has been extensively studied across various open and group-based online learning arrangements (i.e., Allred, Hochstetler, and Goering 2020; Kalir 2020a; Goller et al. 2021), the use of this technology within a university LMS is a recent development. Unexpected difficulties in mapping annotations to readings, caused by time-bound URLs given to students, curtailed our efforts to trace how KC activities progressed through a given text. These difficulties constrained our ability to locate SA threads as units of analysis, which would have enabled us (for example) to compare KC activities across assigned readings and across time. Accordingly, we recommend future SA studies of Hypothesis establish technical workflows to contextualize discussion at multiple scales (i.e., thread, text, course), and examine threads as a unit of analysis to better understand the social sense-making processes of students as KC activities occur over time (i.e., Eryilmaz et al. 2013).

In light of our study’s strengths and limitations, this case described undergraduate student participation in asynchronous, group-based online discussion by detailing the extent to which their SA was discursive, and by analyzing the presence and prevalence of KC activities in SA. Notably, only a quarter (24%) of student SA across all three courses was discursive, although this varied substantially between courses. Threads accounted for almost half the SA written in GERO, over a third of the SA in GSWS, and less than one-tenth of the SA in PUB (annotations in PUB comprised more than half the total corpus, see Table 3). Nonetheless, online discussion did evidence all seven KC activities when students’ SA was discursive, albeit to differing degrees. Across the annotation corpus, interpretation was by far the most common KC activity (Figure 2), a finding consistent with previous research (Eryilmaz et al. 2013; Plevinski et al. 2017). Yet unlike Eryilmaz et al.’ (2013) analysis of KC sequences within SA threads, we found that interpretation seldom elicited peer response (Figure 4).

Our exploratory study is pertinent to long-standing interest in the “social life” of texts (Brown and Duguid 1996) and the value of collaborative annotation (i.e., van der Pol, Admiraal, and Simons 2006) during asynchronous online discussion. Moreover, our findings about KC activities may be useful for researchers interested in the cognitive and social qualities of student annotation. For example, with respect to Gao et al.’ (2013) model of productive online discussion, we found student participation in SA primarily demonstrated discussion for comprehension (as evidenced by the KC activities of interpretation and elaboration) as well as discussion for improved understanding. Yet our analysis of the distribution of KC activities by course and category (Figure 3) revealed that students less frequently utilized SA to critique or actively negotiate meanings, reconsider assertions, or revise their thinking. KC activities analogous to engagement with diverse perspectives—like elaboration, questioning, consensus building, and conflict—were identified within discursive SA though in varying degrees (Table 4). We found noteworthy course-level variation in how students wrote and shared annotation as a participatory social process through which divergent ideas were subsequently negotiated and synthesized (i.e., Onrubia and Engel 2009). In this respect, we speculate that discursive SA productively mediated the ongoing and social negotiation of meaning-making in GERO, perhaps also in GSWS, though probably not in PUB where only 6% of course SA were discursive. SA can, in some circumstances, make visible complex group-level cognitive processes (like conflict and consensus building) through online discourse. Moreover, our prior research indicated that students perceived social value in reading and writing annotation to clarify confusion, confirm ideas, and engage diverse perspectives (Kalir et al. 2020). Nonetheless, further research should clarify the processual ways in which discursive SA aids student groups in sharing conflicting ideas and synthesizing among divergent perspectives.

Notably, student participation in SA may also reflect course-specific factors, including instructor expectations about online discussion. In PUB—the largest course in our sample—students were required to write at least two annotations per reading, perhaps explaining why every student in the class annotated and wrote annotations of the greatest length (Table 1). However, the PUB assessment rubric did not emphasize peer interaction, which may explain, in part, both the overwhelming quantity of no-thread SA (94% of the course annotation) and interpretation as that course’s prominent KC activity (Figure 3). In GERO, alternatively, an assessment rubric incentivized discursive SA. Students in this course were evaluated, partly, on “engaging with other students (responding to others’ comments).” It may not be surprising that GERO featured the highest percentage of top-of-thread SA and peer replies among courses. This may also explain other characteristics of GERO annotations, such as the relatively high prevalence of consensus building, and the fact that less frequent KC activities—like consensus building, support, and conflict—comprised over one-third of course SA (the highest percentage of such KC activities in the study). Across all courses, instructors approached their involvement in SA from a “more is not always better” (Zhu et al. 2020, 267) stance, collectively writing just 1% of the corpus. Given difference and similarity among instructional contexts and practices, future SA research—and, in particular, design-oriented rather than descriptive studies—should carefully consider how to scaffold students’ writing of SA so that it is both discursive and encouraging of particular KC activities.

This study provides further evidence that SA is a productive form of online learning enabling students’ collaborative KC. As such, we conclude our discussion by noting methodological and instructional implications that should be useful for other researchers and educators interested in SA. First, with only a handful of SA studies examining KC activity, we made an intentional decision to borrow Plevinski et al.’ (2017) codebook rather than create a bespoke analytic scheme. We encourage other SA researchers to take up this common method when studying KC in online learning with larger samples of students, more courses, and other disciplines. Second, future studies might also combine thread-level analysis of student annotation with additional data sources like educator interviews, student focus groups, and direct course observations (as with the methods in Schneider et al. 2016) to better contextualize how SA enables KC progressions within the broader social life of a course. Third, a range of instructional opportunities are also possible if instructors can, in real-time, be made aware of students’ SA use, emerging participation patterns, and the ongoing development of KC activities. The design of complementary technologies, such as learning analytics dashboards that dynamically report student SA (Kalir 2020a), could be attuned to KC patterns so that instructors might better support group-level discourse across course texts and orchestrate sequential collaborative activities. Aiding instructor knowledge of student SA through efficient feedback processes would also help inform the ways in which instructors participate in online discussion to clarify student misunderstanding and build connections to relevant disciplinary literature and methods. New instructional methods could also encourage students to write SA evidencing a wider range of KC activities. Our final instructional recommendation is that instructors model and transparently assess how SA enables productive, discipline-specific online discussion in accordance with course learning objectives (Zhu, Shui, and Chen 2020).

Conclusions

This study examined the affordances of SA as asynchronous online discussion and analyzed how SA enabled students’ KC activities. Our case provides further evidence that SA, as mediated by the Hypothesis technology, is a productive form of online discussion through which undergraduate students in multiple disciplinary contexts interacted with peers (i.e., Kalir et al. 2020), made sense of academic content (i.e., Kararo and McCartney 2019), and constructed knowledge by reading and writing together (i.e., Sprouse 2018). As the first descriptive cross-disciplinary account of students using Hypothesis SA to construct knowledge together, this case details the ways in which SA made cognition visible and collaborative activity possible (i.e., Kalir 2020a; Chan and Pow 2020). Undergraduate student SA as online discussion was a socio-cognitive context within which we identified the predominance of textual interpretation, a supporting set of KC activities that included elaboration, clarification, and asking questions, as well as a less frequent group of KC activities that included consensus building, support, and conflict. Given long-standing interest in SA and learning (i.e., Novak et al. 2012) and recent changes in digital education, this study offers a valuable and timely contribution to the literature. While our broader study was designed and conducted prior to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, we analyzed data for this case and wrote this article throughout the disrupted 2020-21 academic year. Amid the pandemic, hybrid and online courses became the primary mode of learning in higher education. Changes to digital learning arrangements exacerbated by the pandemic may, in part, benefit from light-touch and highly-collaborative learning technologies—like SA—that promote online discussion and aid student KC about discipline-specific concepts, methods, and content. In this respect, our study extends an established line of inquiry about the educational benefits of SA, provides practical and relevant insight about SA as asynchronous online discussion, and can help shape future research about the social practices and cognitive qualities of collaborative learning in higher education.

Data availability