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This design-based research study examines how a collaborative annotation tool, Perusall, supported the development of community within an asynchronous online graduate course. Students read and engaged with assigned texts uploaded to Perusall each week, providing numerous opportunities for students to interact and collaborate with each other using the tool’s various sharing and communication features. Both text interactions and peer-to-peer interactions on Perusall increased throughout the course, with peer-to-peer interactions increasing at a greater rate, indicative of community growth within the course. Collaborative annotation tools capture students’ thinking and processing in the moment, more closely mirroring the learning that one might see in a face-to-face class when students discuss content with their instructor and/or classmates. This study offers insights for teachers, teacher educators, and school leaders about new approaches for developing community in online educational contexts, especially considering the drastic shift to online learning as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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An increase in curated lists of books focused on race, bias, equity, and privilege has begun tasking teachers with examining and identifying diversity within their own classroom libraries. As purchasing new books is not always feasible, teachers can look to the culturally authentic books already in their possession to help extend conversations around diversity and social justice issues. In addition to the stories told within these books, there is a resource that often gets overlooked, the author’s note. Author’s notes frequently add to the voices and experiences shared within the stories themselves. They can provide more factual information related to events in the story, or an author’s own personal connection. Adding exposure to an author’s note during literacy instruction can deepen conversations about and even open avenues for further research into a person or topic aligned with social justice.

This article reports on a qualitative study of the graduate-level course “teaching multiliteracies.” At the time of the study, 24 of the 27 enrolled students were originally from China, and the experiences of 4 of these students are highlighted. Analysis examined how students’ figured worlds of education intersected with course concepts and suggests that, despite claiming to enjoy the class and to appreciate an expanded notion of literacy, students did not see how multiliteracies pedagogy could be compatible with the figured worlds of K–12 education in China. We argue that participants’ understandings of and challenges to course concepts help illuminate the complexities of teaching Western literacy pedagogies to Chinese students for teachers, researchers, and students themselves.