Compared to online systems for collaborative authoring like the google office suite or miro, collaborative annotations of and communication about online documents is still quite underdeveloped. Medium tries to do a some highlight-sharing and inline annotation stuff which is certainly interesting, but maybe there is more.
If we consider reading documents not as a passive consumption of text, but an active process of structuring, organization and annotation (like it would be i a learning context), even more possibilities open up.
This master thesis for one or two candidates tries to develop a prototype of a system where readers collaboratively work with a given document with the goal to not only understand it, but enhance it with eg. current events, connotations, crosslinks to other materials, links into the internet etc.
Ultimately, the goal is to create an environment where the barriers between the roles of teachers and students get torn down, and both groups can benefit from each other.