Hypothes.is social and group annotation

Hypothes.is is an annotation tool designed to facilitate collaborative online discussion. It adds a markup and annotation layer over any online content, uploaded PDF, or even YouTube video transcript and can be connected to Brightspace course rosters, grades, and group information.

Its most obvious application is as social annotation that can make online discussions more meaningful, productive, and engaging, but it is also a useful way to encourage and demonstrate authentic engagement with reading material and then examine subsequent reflection.

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).

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An example of a PDF and diagram with annotations.

Configure Hypothesis in Brightspace (per assignment/Content item)

If the instructor is using PDFs, they must add those to the Content area of their Brightspace site first before adding Hypothesis integrations for them.

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

2. Scroll to the Third Party area of the More menu and select Hypothesis Reading 1.3. This will open the Assignment details.

3. If the reading is in PDF form in the Content area, select D2L. If the readings are links to websites, select URL. 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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   1. If D2L is selected, a view of the Content area will appear in folder format. Navigate to the reading in the content area and select it then choose the Select button.

   2. If URL is selected, paste the link to the PDF into the available box.

4. The next step gives the option to title the Content item where the link will go, and then 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.

5. 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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Grade Hypothesis contributions in Brightspace

Brock’s Hypothesis implementation automatically creates an accompanying item in Grades for each reading in the Content area, once the first student contribution is graded. This will be 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 area is to the right of this (note that all individual activity is scored out of ten).

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The grading process would look something like this:

1. View annotations and highlights, which are labeled and timestamped.

2. Filter by student, if needed.

3. Use the dropdown to see only contributions by the selected student.

4. Grade the selected student.

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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.

Video transcript annotation

Hypothesis can present YouTube content in a video player with a synchronized transcript, where students will be able to highlight and annotate that text. Setup is straightforward and otherwise functions the same as a typical text-based reading.

Instructors will want to set the Hypothesis Content item to Open in a new tab (through the three dot menu in the top-right, then Edit) to provide the best experience to students.

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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.