With the Annotations feature, instructor personas can add their own supplemental notes to a course for a specific group of learners without altering the main course content.
Use Case Information
Setting up annotations will allow managers with the right permissions to add specialized notes to course content targeted at specific groups of enrolled learners. For example:
- A workshop facilitator is aware that a lot of people in her VILT also completed a related workshop last quarter. She wants to highlight the connection between the two workshops and remind the participants of some other pre-existing knowledge that may be relevant. She can use an annotation to leave in a note on one of the pre-learning pages that participants complete before the meeting.
- A teacher has a lot of second language learners in his class and has prepared an extra vocabulary activity to help support these students as they watch a video in a course. He can use an annotation to link to the extra resource on the same page as the video.
When configured you can control the following:
- Site admin roles can control which users and roles have access to create or manage annotations
- Instructors can leave specialized content for each session
- Panorama managers can add notes to content unique to each sublicense
Who should use Annotations?
While annotations are content that is presented to learners, the use case for annotating content is different from authoring content. In many cases, two different personas are responsible for creating course content vs engaging with learners around the content:
- An author persona creates the core course content (adding videos, text, SCORM files, etc. to a content object).
- An instructor or facilitator persona engages with learners by presenting meetings, facilitating discussions, grading, etc.
Annotations functionality is intended for an instructor/facilitator persona and the interface for creating and managing annotations is separate from the interface for authoring a content object.
Annotation Types
Users with the right permissions can create two types of Annotations: Site Level and Panorama Level.
Site Level
Site-level annotations can be created & managed by Main Site manager roles. They are unique to each session (i.e., the annotations are connected to a specific session) and are visible to all main site learners who are enrolled in the session. Managers with access will create site-level annotations from the main content list.
Panorama Level
Panorama-level annotations can be created & managed by Main Site or Panorama manager roles. They are associated with a unique sublicense and session combo (i.e., you can author different annotations for each sublicense the session is provisioned to) and are visible to all panorama learners who are in the sublicense and enrolled in the session. Managers with access will create panorama-level annotations from the panorama content list.
Note
Site-level and Panorama-level annotations are separate from one another, e.g., site-level annotations are not visible to learners in a panorama.
Setting Up Annotations
There are a few things to set up before annotations will be available to your instructor personas. Follow this checklist before adding this feature to your workflow!
Enable the feature flag
Annotations is a premium feature and behind a feature flag.
Please reach out to your Account Team to have this feature enabled on your instance.
Set Up Roles & Permissions
The Annotating Content permission is enabled for our default Admin role. This permission is not enabled for any other default admin roles.
You can add the Annotating Content permission to any custom role. You can find the permission in the Curriculum Manage Content section of the permissions page.
Path: Users > Managers > Add or Edit Custom Role Permissions
Note
The Annotating Content permission must be enabled together with another permission that allows the user to view the content list – Manage Assignments or one of the permissions in the Manage Content section.
Tip
Find more guidance on creating custom roles in the Managing Admin Users article.
Enable Annotations in Content
Annotations can be enabled at the content level via our Utilities settings. This setting is available for courses, microcourses, ILTs with pre/post learning, and VILTs with pre/post learning.
Enable the Annotations enabled? setting for any content item that you want to make annotatable.
- Go to Courses > All Courses.
- Click into a content title to edit.
- On the Content step, click Utilities.
- In the modal that opens up, select the Discussions tab and enable Annotations enabled?.
- Don't forget to Save.
Tip
The Annotations enabled? setting will copy over to a cloned course. Annotations themselves will not be copied.
Adding & Managing Annotations
Annotators cannot change the core content of the course - they can only add supplemental notes/annotations. Annotations are not created or managed in the typical authoring interface; the annotations interface is essentially a preview of what the learner sees, which allows the instructor/facilitator persona to have a clear understanding of how the annotation and the core content will interact in the learner experience. Annotations are not available in resource library pages.
You can create, view, edit, and delete annotations in content items for main site learners if:
- you have a main site user role with the Annotating content permission enabled,
- you have access to the course,
- and annotations are enabled for the course.
You can create, view, edit, and delete annotations in content items for panorama learners if:
- you have a main site OR a panorama user role with the Annotating content permission enabled,
- you have access to a sublicense where the course is provisioned,
- and annotations are enabled for the course.
This includes annotations that were created by other people, which is useful in cases where one instructor substitutes for another or main school admins want to review annotations.
Viewing Annotations
- Navigate to the Courses or Events list at the main site OR within a panorama.
- Locate a course, microcourse, ILT with pre/post learning, or VILT with pre/post learning.
- Open the Actions Menu and select Annotate.
Note
This option only appears if you have the appropriate permission and annotations are enabled for the content item.
- Navigate to the course page where you wish to view an annotation.
- If you accessed the course from the panorama courses or events list, you’ll see a dropdown with a list of all sublicenses you have access to. Select the sublicense that you want to view.
Note
When a site admin navigates to a panorama content list to view panorama-level annotations, the annotations are displayed with main site formatting (fonts, link color, etc.). This is only true for the site admin view; learners and panorama admins see the annotations with the correct panorama formatting.
Creating Annotations
Once created, the author of each annotation will be visible to other users who view this content.
- Once you've navigated to a course page, if no annotation exists, click on Add Annotation button to add one.
- Enter your annotation within the WYSIWYG editor and click Save.
Warning
There is no “draft” status for annotations. As soon as they are saved, they’re visible to learners.
Note
Panorama Specifics:
- If the content item is not provisioned to the sublicense you selected, you will not be able to save your annotation.
- It’s not possible to apply a single annotation across multiple sublicenses. They have to be authored independently.
- Purchasable content is not annotatable. In order to annotate a course for a sublicense, the content must be provisioned to the sublicense.
Tip
Need to troubleshoot annotations? Make sure to review the intro to this section for a bullet point list of permissions you need to see annotations in each course!
Editing and Deleting Annotations
- To make updates to an existing annotation, navigate to the desired page where the annotation exists and click the Edit Annotation button.
- Within the edit menu you can:
- Update the content of this annotation within the WYSIWYG editor. Click Save when finished.
- If you aren’t already the author, you can also optionally select Make me the author, which will override the previous author and display you as the author when learners view the annotation.
- Cancel any changes you do not want to make by clicking the Cancel button. You can also delete an annotation from the editing interface.
Note
Annotations persist unless an admin changes or deletes them. Also note:
- If the page is deleted, annotations are deleted.
- If the course is deleted, annotations are deleted.
- If the page content is edited, annotations are unchanged.
Learner Experience
Annotations are displayed to learners above the main content of the course page. Learners can see who authored the annotation and longer annotations are collapsed by default so that the main course content is still visible below them.
Which Learners can view which annotations?
Main site learners can view any annotations for any session they are enrolled in as long as the annotations were added via the main site content list (i.e., they are main site-level annotations). Main site learners cannot view panorama-level annotations (i.e., annotations that were added via the panorama content list).
Panorama learners can view annotations for any session that is provisioned to their sublicense as long as the annotations were added via the panorama content list (i.e., are panorama-level annotations). Panorama learners learners cannot view main site-level annotations (i.e., annotations that were added via the main site content list), nor can they view annotations for sublicenses that they don’t have access to.
Note
If learner has access to multiple sublicenses that have an annotation, we only display the most recently updated annotation.
Translations
For longer annotations, learners can click a Read more button to expand the annotations and Show less to collapse; these labels can be edited in Platform Translations > Learner Experience section: annotations.expand & annotations.collapse.