New multi-modal annotation tools hold the promise of bringing the benefits of face-to-face contact to remote, asynchronous interactions. One such system, RichReview++, incorporates new techniques to improve access to the embedded multimedia commentary and allows users to annotate with new modalities, like deictic gestures. We conducted a series of field deployments of RichReview++ to characterize how these features benefit students using them for activities in the university classroom. Our first deployment investigated the use of multi-modal annotations as a way for instructors to provide feedback on student term papers. Our second deployment used annotations to support peer discussion about assigned readings in a graduate-level course. We found that presenting voice comments as interactive waveforms seems to facilitate students' consumption of the instructor's voice comments. We also found that gestural annotations clarify voice and give annotators a quick and lightweight way to alter the scope of their voice comments. Based on these results, we suggest ways to best leverage multi-modal annotation tools in education environments.

The digitization of educational course content has proved to be problematic for math instructors due to the lack of quality feedback tools that can accommodate the commenter to efficiently express math formulae and convey descriptions about complex ideas contextualized in situ. This paper proposes that RichReview, a document annotation system which creates inking, voice and deictic gestures on top of the student's submitted work, is a possible formative math feedback solution, because it enables face-to-face like commentary within the contexts of the document at hand. A preliminary qualitative evaluation study conducted while having students receive RichReview feedback showed promise to our approach to enhance the quality of feedback, with the implication that incorporating multi-modal feedback into workflows can be an effective method to address elements of feedback submissions lacking in coursework that has moved online.