Add comments to single text-/media elements

1 Requirements

Creating and using educational ressources in ILIAS with the ILIAS Page Editor (eg. Wiki, Learning Module etc.)  often involves teams who collaborate on the contents. An essential feature in working collaboratively is the possibility to add notes to specific text passages in order to comment on each others work. Via comments it is possible to help develop a certain resource without directly stepping into someone elses work.
 
While it is possible to add notes to single items in ILIAS, it is not possible to add notes/comments to individual text-/media elements within the ILIAS page Editor.
 
Therefore my suggestion would be to add a comment/annotation module to single text/media elements. In my opinion an integration into the page-tab of the ILIAS Page Editor - more precisely an icon next to every page editor element which shows the number of comments made to this element (similar to the envelope for ILIAS mail) would be ideal.
The best solution would be to have an own comment icon next to any text/media element, this way the comment is related to the respective page element not only content-wise but also visually.

2 Status

• Scheduled for: Not scheduled yet (will be set by Jour Fixe)
• Funding: Funded by Universität Freiburg
• Implementation of the feature is done by
• Contract settled: No
• Tested by / status: (name, e-mail), (status information set after implementation)

3 Additional Information

Contact the following persons if you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding:

• Information about concept: Barbara Müller (barbara.mueller@rz.uni-freiburg.de); Marko Glaubitz (marko.glaubitz@rz.uni-freiburg.de)
  
• Information about funding: Barbara Müller (barbara.mueller@rz.uni-freiburg.de); Marko Glaubitz (marko.glaubitz@rz.uni-freiburg.de)

4 Discussion

HL., 23. Okt. 2013: Good suggestion. But this is just a small piece of a useful text-annotation functionality. When we begin implementing more text-annotation functionality, shouldn`t we implement the whole thing?
 
I post two website where you can see that there will be more textannotation-ideas in future:
=> Digital Text annotations - a website for annotations at Harvard
=> Wikipedia - Annotation types
 
And, when the peer-feedback tool is activated in the exercise-tool and Blog or E-Portfolio is chosen, then peers should have the possibility to add their feedback using this new annotation-functionalities.

Marko Glaubitz, 23.Okt. 2013: Hi Hansjörg, how are you doing? I agree with you in general, but I think that we can realise our small or rather partial solution for this field of challenges in the near future whereas your ideas go way further and may take a much longer time to be implemented. Would  you see our concept as a good first step? Do you miss anything in our concept that might hinder further development in this direction?

HJ., 24. Okt. 2014: JF should discuss possible developments:
- Different tools use the ILIAS page editor. But textannotation functionalities are warmly welcome in some tools/scenarios, in other scenarios maybe not.
- Should we implement/develop/have/search for a textannotation library, and this textannotation library could be implemented in different tools/services.
- If we find a good open-source textannotation library, a library that fulfills most of the possibilities shown at the Harvard Website, then maybe a implementation could be possible for 4.5. If we always let develop just small functionalities, then we need years for the same.

Alex Killing 13 Apr 2014: Similar to the discussion on Linking in ILIAS Editor my preference would be to create a dedicated FW page for the a CKEditor integration as a technical basis for the ILIAS editor and to start with a feasability study. After that a detailed concept/prototype for annotation support should be worked out.

Matthias Kunkel, 13 April 2014: I have added a new wiki page « Suggestions for an Improved ILIAS Page Editor (outdated) » and added a link to this page.

Matthias Kunkel, Alexander Killing, 13 June 2014: Due to the dependency to a possible ckEditor migration, we postpone this topic to 4.6 earliest.

5 Implementation

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