I recently read an interesting article in Educause Review talking about the development of a series of tools to support Social Reading. These tools vary in how they work, but generally allow individuals to create notes/questions about a digital text and then allow the Professor (and possibly fellow students in the class) to see all the comments. With MIT’s tool more intense color reflects more comments on that part of the text. LACOL’s Active and Engaged Reading (AER) working group, also focuses on issues of reading in a digital age, including the goals and practices for academic reading as they evolve on our campuses.
If this sounds like something that would be of interest to your classes, please reach out to the Academic Technology group.