Research has yet to explore how the social and technical affordances of open web annotation (OWA) can mediate connections among educators in service of their professional learning. This study examined educator participation in the Marginal Syllabus, a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment that encouraged connected conversation via OWA. Multiple quantitative methods, including text sentiment analysis and social network analysis, were used to discern key discursive characteristics among the 9 conversations of the 2016–2017 Marginal Syllabus (1,163 annotations authored by 67 participating educators). Key discursive characteristics of educators’ connected conversations include: (a) generally positive sentiment; (b) educators who annotated most prolifically also authored the greatest percentage of annotations with neutral sentiment; and (c) conversations of at least 4 annotations tended to demonstrate a greater percentage of negative sentiment. The sentiment trends and study limitations are addressed in the final discussion.
- 2 views