Seed the syllabus with annotations to model both the content and process of this activity. For example, add an annotation to the course title, likely on the first page/top of syllabus that says something like: “Welcome to our syllabus! As a working document, you are very welcome to ask questions, share reactions and confusions, suggest revisions, note errors/copyedits, share thoughts and strategies, provide peer-to-peer advice.” These annotation “seeds” are akin to discussion prompts, can encourage informal observations and reactions, and elicit peer-to-peer discussion about course content as directly tethered to the syllabus.

After seeding your syllabus with introductory notes, share your syllabus with your students. If, for example, your syllabus is a Google doc, share the doc link with your learners via a course announcement, post, or learning management system.

Learner annotation can happen over a set period of time (like a few days or the first week of the semester), and may occur either synchronously or asynchronously depending upon the technology used for social annotation.

Educator response to learner annotations can vary: Specific questions may require an immediate and clarifying response; some observations may not require an educator response and can be productive sites of peer-to-peer dialogue; and when multiple annotations are similar, one response may sufficiently address a topic or concern.

As learners annotate together, encourage meta-cognitive observations about how social annotation practices may be relevant to other course activities, such as close reading and textual analysis, the importance of sharing rough-draft thinking, and collaborative meaning-making.