Choosing your OER Tools: A Tool Look Book
4.10 Hypothes.is for Social Annotation
Karna Younger
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to
- socially annotate with the Hypothes.is tool.
What is Hypothes.is?
If you are a fan of marginalia, then you are going to love Hypothes.is. It is a free tool for your students to collaboratively and critically engage with their course materials. We briefly tried out Hypothes.is in chapter 2. This chapter is intended to give you a slightly closer look Hypothes.is with some assignment examples and another opportunity to try it out. We promise it this is not a paid advertisement for Hypothes.is.
Let’s start with the big picture: Here is a slightly dramatic but not wrong introduction to Hypothes.is, covering its creation and purpose.
How can I use it?
Basically, Hypothes.is layers a type of skin over what you are reading so that you can highlight or annotate web pages, PDFs online, and YouTube transcripts. After you create an account and add the browser extension to your browser, you can activate Hypothes.is to initiate and respond to notes with text and photos. You can even embed a YouTube video. Annotations appear on a right-sided menu. You can write sweet nothings to yourself in private or or go public with your feelings to the whole Hypothes.is community. When working with students, though, we recommend creating a private group to be respectful of their educational privacy.
Assignments
Hypothes.is can be a great engagement tool to help you scaffold complicated concepts or skills for your students, creating a learning community. Hypothes.is offers some “starter assignments” and we would add our own suggestions:
- Have students evaluate your OER pilot. As part of the grant, we ask that you pilot at least a portion of your OER. Instead of or in additional to surveying students about their opinions, have them annotate the OER directly. You may add discussion prompts or simply ask them to note what worked well or didn’t with any suggested improvements.
- Ask students to annotate your OER. They can pinpoint typos for extra credit or suggest topics for improvement or identify missing perspectives (that maybe they could provide). At the end of the semester or year, you can incorporate helpful suggestions.
- Initiate student peer-review of OER content. If you aim to include student work in your OER, part of the vetting process could be student peer-review of the content. Students will learn how to offer constructive criticism and you will have a better sense of the pedagogical value or cultural relevancy of content before adding.
Faculty experiences
Builds student confidence and community
Platform for Entry Points to DEIA Topics
How can I get started?
The Hypothes.is folks are so kind to provide documentation for how to create a Hypothes.is account and install the browser extension. Below is a grand voice-over screencast of Hypothes.is from Touro University Libraries, taking you from creating an account, activating your sidebar, creating a group, and annotating.
Your Turn: Annotate with Hypothes.is
In the introduction to chapter 2, you had the opportunity to use Hypothes.is to annotate “Diversity Families“ by Joan Giovannini. Created for the ROTEL Project, Giovannini remixed an existing OER to include DEIA and social justice content. If you haven’t already, we would like you try using Hypothes.is to evaluate Giovannini’s chapter for equity.
Hypothes.is is a free, web-based tool that allows you or a group of people to annotate webpages and more in private or public groups. For instance, we use it for our own private research projects or to mark up OER that we are remixing for OERFSJ.
- If you do not have a Hypothes.is account, set up a free account. Be certain to add Hypothes.is to your browser. (We usually use Chrome.)
- Once Hypothes.is is a part of your life, join the OERFSJ Faculty Hypothes.is group using this invitation. This is a private group, so only OERFSJ members can see annotations.
- Open “Diversity Families” and activate Hypothes.is. If a collapsed sidebar on the rig
ht side of the page is not present, you should have a small H on your browser’s extensions menu (as pictured to the right). - Make certain you have selected the OERFSJ Faculty group to record your comments. To change, open the sidebar to the right and click on the down arrow
Use small down arrow to select Hypothes.is group, OERFSJ Faculty. at the top left of the sidebar (likely next to the word Public, the default group).
- Feel free to respond throughout the chapter to questions posted to the OERFSJ Faculty group or raise your own thoughts.
Level up if you have already completed the above. Try adding a video or picture to illustrate your Hypothes.is post.
Tip: Hypothes.is could be a useful tool for annotating the OER content you want to remix. We used it to remix OER for this Handbook.
Idea Generator
Hypothes.is has a heap of ideas to utilize their tool in their course:
Hypothes.is Jam Session
Licenses and Attributions
“Hypothes.is for Social Annotation” by Karna Younger is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
