Hypothes.is social and group annotation

Hypothes.is is an annotation tool designed to facilitate collaborative online discussion. It connects directly to a Brightspace Content item and adds an interactive layer over an embedded PDF, web page, or other online text content and allows students to add comments and highlights.

Brock University has an institutional license with limited availability in Brightspace for 2024-2025.

Key features

• Student comments can include external links, media, and tags for other students.

• Individual student activity can be graded through the standard Brightspace tools and automatically sent to Grades.

• Brightspace Groups can be used to allow a limited number of students to view different instances of a document (for group work or to reduce activity on a single document).

Configure Hypothesis in Brightspace (per assignment/Content item)

1. Go to a course site’s Content area and then Add Existing (top-right)→ External Tool Activity.

2. Scroll to the bottom of the External Tool Activity menu and select Create New LTI Link.

3. Title the new link Hypothesis (or base in on the reading material), and add https://lms.ca.hypothes.is/lti_launches as the LTI URL.

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4. Click Create and Insert. This will add a learning object in the Content area and present the Assignment details where the reading material can be added copy and paste the URL of the webpage/PDF of the reading the groups will be annotating.

   1. The reading must be a PDF document (with selectable text), the URL of a public website (no paywalls or login), or a YouTube video (which must include a transcript).

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5. The next step provides two choices:

   1. Auto grading based on participation (consult Hypothesis' guide for full details). Manual grading is possible without this enabled.

   2. Group assignment to connect Hypothesis to Brightspace Groups. This will provide a group of students with their own version of the text for shared annotation. This is also useful for breaking up large classes where many annotations will begin to clutter the reading.

6. If the Group assignment options are not needed, click Save to view the reading with the Hypothesis overlay enabled.

Create student Groups in Brightspace

1. From the navbar, select Course Tools → Groups.

2. Select the New Category button to create a new set of Groups.

3. Specify a Category Name, Enrollment type, etc. Further considerations are in our article on the Groups tool and Group Enrollment Types. The Category and Groups must be configured but actual student enrollment within each Group can be adjusted later.

4. Click the Save button when finished.

5. Create a Hypothesis reading (as above) and get to the Assignment details page. For an existing Hypothesis reading, this can be found through the Edit button in the top-left.

6. Check Group assignment and use the drop-down to select the Group Category, then Save.

The Groups are now integrated with Hypothesis and will appear in the top-right of the instructor view. Members will only see annotations made by other members of their Group. An instructor can toggle between Groups [1] to see all activity but then filter by Student [2] to grade [3].

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Video instructions for Hypothesis groups

Below is a how-to video on creating Groups in Brightspace and associating them with Hypothesis for group annotation.

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Grade Hypothesis contributions in Brightspace

Brock’s Hypothesis implementation automatically creates an accompanying item in Grades for each reading in the Content area. These are assigned a default points value of 100 and a weight of 0, but that can be easily adjusted when editing in the Grades tool itself.

Grading within a Hypothesis reading is thus configured automatically and should be straightforward.

The default view of a reading will display all annotation activity but an instructor can easily filter to show only that of a single student by selecting their name in the top-right. The grade are is to the right of this (note that all individual activity is scored out of ten).

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Rubric ideas

• Hypothesis provides example rubrics for evaluating student annotation and participation

• More comprehensive and general details can be found on CPI’s own resource page on Rubrics.

Examples of use at Brock

• Roberto Nickel used Hypothesis in CLAS 1P95 Myths of the Greek and Roman Gods to replace 25 seminars in his large 500 person first year class. Read the Greek and Roman Myths Hypothesis case study for more information.

• Martin Danahay used Hypothesis in his third-year Victorian Anthology course to teach textual analysis. Full details are outlined in the Teaching Textual Analysis using Hypothesis case study.

Other annotation ideas

• Close reading and primary source analysis. Use Hypothesis to guide students through key passages in readings. They can highlight, comment, and ask questions as they go.

• Collaborative “debugging” of code or technical projects. If your course involves code or design work, students can use Hypothesis to annotate shared examples, tagging spotting bugs, suggesting improvements, or talking through how something works.

• Practicing qualitative coding. In research methods or social science courses, upload sample transcripts or texts and ask students to collaboratively code them.

• Analyzing case studies. Have students annotate a case study in advance of a class discussion. They can highlight important details, raise questions, or comment on critical passages.