Hypothesis

Social annotation is the process of highlighting, marking up, and zooming in on the component parts of a text in the company of classmates and colleagues. Whether oriented toward a goal of comprehension, translation, formal or historical analysis, or revision, these communal acts of reading closely together often represent the cornerstone of pedagogies of interpretation and analysis and, additionally, are frequently remembered with fondness by instructors and students alike as moments of keen insight and illumination.

Social annotation brings the age-old process of marking up texts to the digital learning space and makes assigned readings a collaborative exercise. A recent study found that over 65 percent of students in the study stated social annotation helped them understand different perspectives and inspired them to think about course content outside the classroom.

With Hypothesis, students can engage with ideas, readings, instructors, and each other in deeper, more meaningful ways through the power of social annotation. By leveraging this pedagogical approach, UIW instructors will find new ways to foster student success by building community, critical thinking skills, and a deeper understanding of readings.

The Hypothesis team recently published a whitepaper discussing the value of social annotation for teaching and learning, which explains why annotation is so effective in engaging students with course content (pdf).

Additionally, Hypothesis sits on top of readings already assigned in your Canvas course, so it’s an easy add to your teaching toolkit. It also supports using groups and is integrated with Canvas groups, and includes SpeedGrader support to send grades directly to the Gradebook.

Yes, there is a free Chrome extension for Hypothesis. However, the version endorsed and used by UIW is the Canvas integration, which offers conveniences such as the ability to create assignments from annotations, SpeedGrader and Gradebook integration, module placement, and more.

Hypothesis can be found as an external tool within Canvas, so it's already turned on for all UIW instructors. Contact your site's Instructional Designer or a Software Specialist to express interest in using Hypothesis and we'll help you get started.

UIW hosted an introductory "Welcome to Hypothesis" introduction session with the Hypothesis team where the tool was introduced and demonstrated as it went live in Canvas. The recording (45 minutes), and accompanying slides, have been made available and can be found with specific chapter markers below. This serves as an excellent onramp to understanding and seeing the tool in action to decide whether or not you'd want to use it in your course.