Enriching Online Classroom Communication with Collaborative Multi-Modal Annotations

In massive open online courses, peer discussion is a scalable solution for offering interactive and engaging learning experiences to a large number of students. On the other hand, the quality of communication mediated through online discussion tools, such as discussion forums, is far less expressive than that of face-to-face communication. As a solution, I present RichReview, a multi-modal annotation system through which distant students can exchange ideas using versatile combinations of voice, text, and pointing gestures. A series of lab and deployment studies of RichReview promised that the expressive multimedia mixture and lightweight audio browsing feature help students better understand commentators? intention. For the large-scale deployment, I redesigned RichReview as a web applet in edX?s courseware framework. By deploying the system at scale, I will investigate (1) the optimal group assignment scheme that maximizes overall diversities of group members, (2) educational data mining applications based on user-generated rich discussion data, and (3) the impact of the rich discussion to students? retention of knowledge. Throughout these studies, I will argue that a multi-modal anchored digital document annotation system enables rich online peer discussion at scale.