Weber State University: Engagement In A Political Science Course

Political science lives and dies on discussion. Debating competing theories of power, dissecting a landmark ruling, weighing the trade-offs of a policy — these are the moments where the subject comes alive. So when a Political Science instructor at Weber State University moved core lectures and case analyses to video, a familiar tension surfaced: the content was strong, but watching it was passive and solitary. Students pressed play, and the conversation that gives the discipline its meaning happened somewhere else, or not at all.

The Challenge: Video Without The Debate

Video is efficient for delivering an argument, but on its own it asks nothing of the viewer. In a course built around interpretation and disagreement, that is a real gap. The instructor wanted students to do more than absorb — to react to a specific claim, question a source, and hear how their peers read the same evidence. A few recurring problems stood out:

• Engagement was invisible until an assignment or exam, by which point misconceptions had already set in.
• Discussion boards sat apart from the video, disconnected from the exact moment that sparked a thought.
• Quieter students rarely spoke up, so the same handful of voices carried every debate.

What They Did With Annoto

Because Annoto connects to the LMS through one-click LTI 1.3, the instructor added our engagement layer directly on top of the videos already in the course — no new platform for students to learn, no content to re-upload. From there, the passive clips became interactive:

• In-video comments let students post reactions and questions anchored to the exact timestamp, so a debate about executive power lives right where the argument is made.
• In-video quizzes and reflection points check comprehension in the moment, prompting students to take a position before moving on.
• Peer visibility turns each video into a shared space, where classmates reply to one another and build on ideas rather than working in isolation.

Our AI copilot, Lumo, helped accelerate setup by auto-generating in-video questions scaffolded to Bloom's taxonomy, giving the instructor a fast starting point to refine rather than a blank page.

The Outcome: A Course That Talks Back

The shift was qualitative but clear. Watching became participating. Threaded, timestamped discussion gave more students a low-pressure way to contribute, and the instructor could see comprehension and attention taking shape while there was still time to respond — not weeks later.

When the conversation happens inside the video, students stop being an audience and start being participants.

Engagement analytics surfaced which segments drew the most discussion and where attention dipped, informing where to add a prompt or revisit a concept. The activity also documented Regular & Substantive Interaction, with results flowing back to the LMS gradebook. For a Political Science course, the win was simple: the debate that belongs at the center of the discipline finally happened where the learning did.