The In-Video Learning Glossary

A shared vocabulary for in-video learning

When a campus adopts in-video collaboration, faculty, instructional designers, IT administrators, and procurement all end up in the same meetings — and they often use the same words to mean different things. Is a "quiz" graded? Is a "comment" public? What exactly counts as "engagement"? This glossary exists so those conversations start from shared definitions. Precise vocabulary makes course design faster, RFPs clearer, and analytics discussions far less confusing.

Terms for interaction

A time-anchored discussion is a conversation pinned to a specific moment in the video, so a question about minute twelve lives at minute twelve. A reflection point is a prompt that pauses playback and asks learners to think or respond before continuing. In-video quizzes, polls and reactions, and peer review are all interaction types layered onto the player itself, while group chat and the activity feed carry the conversation across the whole course.

Terms for insight

Attention analytics describe how learners actually watch — where they linger, skip, and rewatch. Comprehension analytics connect that behavior to responses on quizzes and reflection points, showing not just who watched but who understood. Completion and gradebook sync passes results into your LMS gradebook through LTI 1.3, and analytics export moves the underlying data into your institution's own reporting tools.

Terms for the stack

An LMS integration means Annoto runs inside Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, Brightspace, or Open edX as part of the course, not as a separate destination. A video platform integration means it works on top of Kaltura, Panopto, Wistia, YouTube, or Vimeo without re-hosting your media. The Lumo AI copilot is Annoto's purpose-built education assistant, which drafts quizzes, generates summaries, and surfaces insight from course activity.

The full glossary below defines these and many more terms in alphabetical order. Use it when writing an RFP, onboarding new faculty, or aligning a course team on what to measure — and if a term you need is missing, tell us. This vocabulary grows the way the field does: through educators asking precise questions in real courses. For deeper technical definitions and integration terminology, the documentation at docs.annoto.net picks up where this page leaves off.

Terms for assessment

A formative video assessment checks understanding while learning is still in progress — a short question inside the video whose purpose is feedback, not a grade. Its counterpart, summative assessment, happens after the fact and usually carries points. A mid-video check is the simplest formative form: playback pauses, the learner answers, and the course moves on. Question timing matters as much as question wording here, which is why instructors talk about placement — the practice of positioning a check immediately after the concept it tests rather than at the end. Auto-feedback refers to the explanation a learner sees the moment they answer, turning a wrong response into a teaching moment instead of a lost point.

Terms for watching behavior

An attention heatmap is a visual overlay showing which seconds of a video were watched most and least across a cohort — bright bands mark heavily rewatched passages, gaps mark skipped ones. A drop-off point is the timestamp where a meaningful share of viewers stops watching; a rewatch spike is the opposite signal, a moment learners return to repeatedly, often because it is difficult or dense. Watch rate describes how much of a video an individual actually played, while completion tracking applies a threshold to that number — for example, counting a video complete at ninety percent viewed — and records the result. Passive viewing means playback without interaction; active viewing means the learner commented, answered, or took notes along the way, which is the behavior in-video tools are designed to increase.

Terms for participation and presence

Instructor presence is the visible participation of a teacher inside the video conversation — answering questions at the timestamp where they were asked, endorsing strong peer explanations, and setting the tone in the first week. Moderation covers the controls behind that presence: editing or removing comments, closing threads, and deciding whether learners may post anonymously. Anonymity itself is usually a per-course setting; some faculty enable it to lower the barrier for shy students, others require names to build accountability. Notes are private annotations a learner keeps for themselves at specific timestamps, distinct from public comments, and AI summaries condense either one — a long discussion or a full set of notes — into a short recap the learner can review before an exam.

Terms for administration

LTI 1.3 is the current interoperability standard that lets Annoto launch inside an LMS with secure authentication and grade passback; LTI 1.1 is the earlier version, still supported for platforms that have not migrated. Gradebook passback is the mechanism that writes a completion or quiz result into the LMS gradebook column automatically. A CSV export is a downloadable snapshot of activity data for analysis in a spreadsheet, while an API export delivers the same data continuously to institutional dashboards. These are the terms procurement and IT teams reach for first in any evaluation.