WashU: Time-Tagged Feedback On Student Sign-Language Videos

Sign language is a visual, embodied language. A handshape held a beat too long, a facial expression that doesn't quite match the sign, a movement that drifts off its intended path — these details carry meaning, and they unfold in seconds. For faculty teaching sign language at Washington University in St. Louis, giving students precise feedback on those fleeting moments was the heart of the work. When a learner records themselves signing, a general note like “watch your handshapes” rarely lands. What helps is pointing to the exact second something went right or wrong.

The Situation

Instructors asked students to record short clips of themselves signing, both as practice and as assessment. It's a powerful method — students see themselves the way a conversation partner would — but the feedback loop was clunky. Comments lived in a separate document or in the gradebook, disconnected from the footage, which forced students to guess which moment a note referred to. Writing timestamped feedback by hand across dozens of videos was slow, and organizing meaningful peer learning around the clips was harder still.

What They Did With Annoto

Because Annoto adds an engagement layer directly on top of video inside the LMS, faculty could turn each student-recorded clip into an interactive workspace — no new platform for students to learn, just the tools appearing right beside the video they already submitted. Instead of describing a moment, everyone could point to it.

• Time-tagged feedback: instructors pinned comments to the precise frame — the sign, the movement, the expression — so students knew exactly what was being discussed.
• Reflection points: students annotated their own signing, naming what they were attempting and where they felt uncertain.
• Peer review: classmates left in-context comments on each other's clips, building a shared vocabulary for talking about form and clarity.
• Everything in the LMS: the work stayed inside the course, and grades flowed back to the gradebook without extra steps.

The Outcome

Feedback became specific and actionable. Rather than reading a paragraph and scrubbing through their video to find the relevant moment, students could click a note and land on the exact second it addressed. The conversation moved into the video itself, where the language lives.

When feedback is anchored to the moment it describes, students stop guessing and start practicing the right thing.

The approach also made peer discussion a natural part of the course instead of an afterthought, and it gave faculty a clear, documented record of Regular & Substantive Interaction with each learner. Engagement analytics surfaced which clips drew attention and where students lingered or hesitated — signals instructors could act on. For a discipline where meaning is carried in the smallest gestures, we're glad the feedback can finally be just as precise.