Lookover: Scaffolding Student Participation in Social Annotation

Abstract

Social annotation platforms such as Perusall and Hypothesis are widely used to support student engagement with course readings, often through required commenting. Yet visible participation does not necessarily produce sustained or substantive peer exchange. Analyzing six weeks of Perusall activity from a graduate course (2,873 comments), we found that participation was often fragmented: 53.5% of comments received no reply, 38.3% were posted within the final 12 hours before the deadline, and over one-third of a double-coded sample went no further than repeating or agreeing with the reading or a peer. Interviews pointed to two linked difficulties: locating a discussion worth entering and contributing something that meaningfully advances it. We present Lookover, an AI-assisted annotation system that scaffolds both stages without writing for students. Discussion Overview helps students identify active themes and relevant threads, while Spark Thinking poses questions that encourage them to move beyond reaction and restatement toward questioning, extending, and substantively responding to peers. A preliminary study with five participants found Discussion Overview valuable for those who noticed it, while the usefulness of Spark Thinking depended on how much a participant already knew about the topic.