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Active Learning

Flipped, Async, or Blended: Annoto Fits How You Already Teach

Prof. Alan Whitmore
·
May 31, 2026
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Most edtech asks you to rebuild your course around the tool. We prefer the opposite. Whether you flip your classroom, teach fully asynchronously, or blend live and online time, the lecture video you already recorded can stay exactly where it lives. Annoto layers engagement on top of it, right inside Canvas, Moodle, Brightspace, or Blackboard, so the modality is your choice and the setup never changes.

Active learning layered onto the same video across teaching models
One engagement layer, whichever way you teach.

Flipped: Turn Pre-Class Watching Into Pre-Class Thinking

In a flipped model, the video only works if students arrive having actually engaged with it. We embed in-video quizzes, reflection points, and comments directly in the timeline, so watching becomes doing. Lumo, our AI copilot, can auto-generate those quiz checks and scaffold them across Bloom's taxonomy, so recall questions early give way to application by the end. Before you walk into class, the analytics tell you where comprehension dipped and which passages sparked the most discussion, so your face-to-face time targets what students genuinely found hard.

In-video quizzes and reflection points placed along the timeline
Watching becomes doing when checks live directly in the timeline.

Asynchronous: Keep the Cohort Present When No One Is Live

Fully online courses lose the room. We give it back by anchoring discussion to specific moments in the video, so a question about minute twelve lives at minute twelve, and every learner who reaches it joins the same conversation. Peer review and reflection prompts turn solitary viewing into collaboration on your schedule, not the clock's. Two things happen automatically:

  • Every timestamped comment, quiz attempt, and reply documents Regular & Substantive Interaction for compliance.
  • Quiz results sync straight to the LMS gradebook, so assessment is built in rather than bolted on.

Blended: One Continuous Thread Across Every Format

Blended teaching moves between live and independent time, and the video is often the connective tissue. Because the engagement layer travels with the content, a discussion that opens before class can continue after it on the very same clip. Nothing is duplicated, re-uploaded, or stranded in a separate app.

The modality changes how students meet the material. It should not change the material, the platform, or your workflow.

That is the point. One video, one LTI 1.3 connection, and the same active-learning tools whether a course is flipped this term and blended the next. We meet you where you already teach.

Author
Prof. Alan Whitmore
Faculty Partner
Long-time practitioner of flipped and blended learning in higher education.
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