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How do I make and share notes?

Instructions for using the webtext’s built-in annotation tools

Alyssa avatar
Written by Alyssa
Updated in the last hour

Highlighting and note-taking tools let you mark content and add notes directly in the webtext. Additionally, if annotation sharing is enabled for your webtext, you can also share your notes with your students.

Highlight and make notes

To highlight, select your desired text, then choose a color from the selection toolbar that appears. If you’d like to change or remove a highlight, click the highlighted text, then select a new color from the menu or click the X to remove the highlight.

The highlighting and note-taking menu appears below a selected portion of text. The menu includes three highlighting colors and the Make a Note button.

To make a note, click Make a Note after selecting your text. A note field will appear where you can type your note. You can format your note using bold, italics, underlining, and bullet points.

You can also paste URLs into your notes. If you paste a video URL, it will automatically embed the video for playback right inside the note.

A selected portion of text with the note-taking menu open in the right-hand margin. In the note-taking field is an embedded YouTube video.

Other URLs will show a preview of the webpage or file.

A selected portion of text with the note-taking menu open in the right-hand margin. In the note-taking field is a preview of a webpage.

If your note includes an embedded video or link preview, you can use the options menu in the top right corner of the preview to make changes to it. Click Convert to URL to remove the preview but keep the link, or click Delete to remove both the preview and link.

Previews may show a “Couldn’t generate link preview” message for links that require login, such as a page in your LMS. If you know the link will work for your students, you can convert the preview to a URL to avoid any confusion.

Note-taking field with the "Couldn't generate link preview" message.

After creating your note, click Save. Your notes will appear in the right margin of the webtext, marked with a gray note icon.

To make changes to one of your notes, click on it, and then choose Edit or Delete from the options menu.

An arrow pointing to the options menu icon in a note, showing the Share Notes with Students toggle and Edit Note and Delete Note options.

Share notes

If your webtext has annotation sharing enabled, you can make notes visible to both you and your students. Shared notes are a great way to provide additional context, offer resources, or call attention to key points directly in the webtext.

After creating a note, check the box labeled “Share note with students” and click Save. Note that only webtexts that have annotation sharing enabled will have this option.

The note-taking menu open in the right-hand margin with an arrow pointing to the “Share note with students” checkbox.

Keep in mind that if you highlight a note and share it with students, the highlight will only appear on your end. This prevents it from conflicting with highlights students may have already made.

Once saved, your shared note will be visible to all students and instructors in the course. It will appear on the webtext page where you created it, as well as in their My Notes page. Their own notes will be marked with a gray note icon, while the notes you’ve shared will appear with a teal shared note icon alongside your name.

Student view of a webtext page with two notes in the right-hand margin, one marked by a gray note icon and the other with a teal share icon.

Students receive notifications whenever you add a shared note to a page that they’ve already visited. When they click the notification, they’re taken directly to the page and section of text where you shared the note.

Expanded notifications panel in the webtext with a notification that a note has been shared.

View your notes

To view all of your notes, open the Tools Menu in the upper-right corner of the webtext and select My Notes.

On the My Notes page, your highlights and notes are organized by chapter and page. You can expand or collapse chapters using the arrow next to the chapter name, and then you can click any page title to revisit that page.

The three-dot menu to the right of the note also lets you return to the page as well as delete highlights and notes.

The My Notes page showing a link to a webtext page and the three-dot menu options: go to page, delete highlight, and delete note.

Your private notes will be marked with a gray icon, and shared notes with a teal icon.

You can also filter your notes using the drop-down menu at the top of the page to view all notes, only private notes, or only shared notes.

Screenshot of the My Notes page with the note filter drop-down menu showing options for All notes, Private notes, and Shared notes

If you’re teaching multiple sections of the same course, you can easily copy your notes to those sections. For more information, visit our Help Center article on copying notes.

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