Using a research product you recently completed, choose three contiguous pages that contain multiple evidence-based claims. Do you feel that you were able to substantiate all of those claims as well as you wished? Some of them? Few of them? If your answer is “some” or “few,” was part of the challenge space-limitations? If so, try to remember additional information or evidence that you cut as you were revising the piece, and use that information to annotate a few passages in the piece, following the description above and the directions here. Consider what was easy and hard about that process. Ask yourself what you are gaining – and what you may be losing – through annotation.
One thing you might have found easy about engaging in ATI is writing your annotations; since they are free-standing you may be able to write them quickly as you don’t need to worry about blending them perfectly into the text.
One thing you might have found difficult about using ATI is finding the materials on which you wanted to call for evidence. (We hope if you try this in the future, following some of the advice we offer elsewhere in the course will facilitate this.)
One thing you might be gaining through annotation is the possibility of demonstrating even more strongly the rigor and power of your work through deploying additional evidence.
Two things you might be losing through annotation are time and parsimony. It might not seem that the “bang” of “retrospective” annotation is not worth the “buck”. You might feel differently if you annotated while writing. With regard to parsimony, how much did what you added contribute to supporting the claim you sought to bolster? Is it a nice-to-have or a need-to-have? What should your annotations contain?