There were several ambitious goals for this ATG project: synchronizing lecture slides with lecture videos at corresponding timestamps; creating an R statistical code library and attaching it to specific points in the lecture videos; building a concept map of the entire course; and parsing annotations created by students from the previous semester in order to associate them with specific points in the lecture videos.

ATG staff accomplished the following:

• Edited full lecture videos from the entire course, then segmented them into shorter lecture topic videos and loaded them into the iSites Collaborative Annotation Tool (CAT)
• Upgraded the Collaborative Annotation Tool to allow posting of annotations to images
• Added lecture slides as instructor annotations and associated them with the corresponding topic videos’ time-range segments for students to review and add reply commentaries
• Completely reorganized the course website, linking and cross-referencing all lecture assets—readings, notes, videos, R code library, problem sets, and examples—to provide students with coherent and contextualized access to online material
• Implemented NB, an open-source PDF annotation tool, for students to add notes to scientific publications

The tools and technologies used for this project included:

• HTML 5, CSS, JavaScript (jQuery)
• PHP
• Flash
• R Code
• NB annotation tool

Professor Gary King continues to incorporate collaborative annotation systems and other collaborative learning tools into Government 2001. Learn what’s new at the course website.