Review by: Kourtoumi, Triantafillia (2005-04-18)

The article describes the design and development of Web annotation tools (WATs) for individual users and a group of users, evaluating five points: annotating on hypertexts, building up knowledge structure, browsing instructions provided electronically by the system administrator or the instuctor, sharing annotations with other learners, and instructing other learners.

The authors situate their work well in challenges of current functionalities in online annotation, e. g. the problem of interactivity (peer-to-peer or instuctor-to-student), mobility of contexts and contents (sharing notes without face-to-face interaction), flexibility of time and place for reading and learning (anytime, anywhere).

The WATs project is designed for users to edit, store, present, and manage annotations on hypertexts; the sharing mode of WATs supports both asynchronous and synchronous peer-based learning and outline distance learning. Further, WATs extends the utility of the individual mode while enhancing computer-based learning by providing a peer-based collaborative learning environment. In the paper WATs is presented in details in its conceptual architecture, system capability, and user interface. Especially the focus into different aspects of the user interface is worthwhile to mention seeing the bigger picture, focusing on a small part, and going back. WATs supports the process of allowing the user to learn how to build up a hierarchical structure for an article from history annotation records made by peers or instuctors; at the same time WATs allows the user to learn and discuss with all the other online users in real time. This is particularly important to a systematic conceptual understanding of the reading and learning process.

On the whole, the authors’ points are well taken. Their final suggestions about how to address the very problems they raise in the development of electronic annotations, however, could offer more concrete ways forward. Two main issues are raised at the end: (1) many annotation programs are not updated once research grants run out; (2) new computing devices require periodical redesign. At the time, WATs is only available to certain students and instructors for testing purposes. Furthermore, the current version of WATs is expected to be simplified while a standalone application program is already planned to be developed.