Hypothes.is: annotate your syllabus and more!

• Why use social annotation?
• Set-up
• Using groups
• First assignment: annotate the syllabus
• Later in the semester

Why use social annotation?

I’m naturally curious about other people’s reading habits, and I love to know what students think about the course materials. But even if I try my best to set up my brick-and-mortar classes in a way that makes space for everybody to contribute, I know that discussions sometimes flow too fast for all students to feel ready to jump in with contributions. Student have told me this in reflections or check-in meetings. I know I often think of good questions the day after a presentation, so we’re in it all together!

To allow more, and different voices to come through, Hypothes.is has been an absolute game-changer. If you haven’t heard of it, you’re late to the party: 2 million (million!) online documents have been annotated with it now, there are one million users and by the middle of last year the number of 25 million annotations was crossed. (I think I made about half of those…)

This tool gives students the chance to write down their thoughts as they’re reading, or after a few hours as they come across a new idea, or when they see another annotation that was made before them. In short: it liberates them from the need to react instantaneously to a debate, and creates space to think. Students who are very quiet in class discussions often turn out to be excellent annotators: they have told me that in-class conversations move too fast for them, but this gives them the chance to jump in when they’re ready.

Set-up

Getting set-up with Hypothes.is is easy! I decided to integrate it as an assignment in the first week for online/remote classes, when we’re setting up our digital tools. For brick-and-mortar classes we can wait until the second week.

My instructions are the same for all classes: http://tdh.bergbuilds.domains/hypothesis-social-annotation/, but the basics are:

1. sign up for a free account, just using an email address
2. install a little extension in Google Chrome (the best browser for this purpose, but there are other options available, for instance for mobile devices)
3. Activate the extension by clicking on it in the menubar

Using groups

At this point, you can annotate pretty much any webpage on the internet. But for teaching purposes, I strongly recommend creating a course-specific group. Once you have an account, you can create a new group in the “groups” tab next to the little cogwheel in the top right corner. I like to use the course number, because it’s easy to remember and it keeps things short and tidy.

With a group, visibility of comments is reduced to the group members (our class) and that means our discussion is limited to our group, just like it is in a classroom.

As part of the first assignment, students join the course group: all it takes is clicking the link to the group. When you create a group, you can find that link at the bottom of the page on the right, and share it in an email, on a Canvas page or on a website.

First assignment: annotate the syllabus

Now a student has made an account, installed the extensions, and joined the course’s group, so we’re ready for some real annotation!

And what better place to start than to annotate the course syllabus? The instructions I use are pretty simple:

• Annotate the syllabus with your questions and comments.
  • Use annotations, or respond to others’ comments (e.g. if you know the answer)
  • Top tip: use tags: add question (when you have a question), answer (when you have an answer), suggestion (when you have a suggestion); add new tags: be creative!
  • You can use text, images, (gifs? Let’s try it!), and insert hyperlinks.
  • If you do not have comments, please acknowledge you read through the syllabus and understand its contents, using a page note.
    • Just click on “Page Note” at the top of the Extension window, and click on the little page icon (left side of the window, under the eye)
• Don’t forget to click the Post button, and make sure it posts to our Group, not to Public!

I find this is a useful way to check if students

• have joined the group
• know how to annotate in the group (vs. in the Public sphere)
• have read (or at least claim to have read) the syllabus

It doesn’t mean I never get questions about the syllabus again, but I do get students alerting me to mistakes and broken links, or their questions show me where I need to be clearer in my language or have to spend some time explaining things in a synchronous session. Overall, I have found this exercise a really useful way to get started with social annotation, and for the students and I to get to know each other a bit better.

Later in the semester

Once we have blog posts up and running, students comment on each other’s blogs using Hypothes.is. As you saw in the third blog post about the Randomly Rotating Content (or the Randomizer for short), I set up a randomizer with the blog posts and send off students to comment.

Here are my generic instructions, which I adjust as required:

• Leave feedback, questions, thoughts, insights about the contents of the posts of your fellow students using Hypothes.is group [insert group name]. You can ask for clarifications, point out similarities and differences with the material you covered, or with your interpretation. This should encourage you to nose around in the other materials you did not read in the first round.
• Use the “Architect’s Model” of giving feedback, and engage with concrete issues. Go beyond “Yeah, I agree,” “I like” or “I think the same”, and instead explain why you have that reaction, or if you disagree, you can try to persuade the original poster of your idea or interpretation.
• Remember that Hypothes.is allows for hyperlinks, e.g. to materials that support your argument, or you can include pictures (memes! [yes, there she is again]), videos etc. that help the original poster to learn more.

I have found that students respond with really good comments on each other’s writings –– they help with clarifications, questions, share encouragement. I’d love to see more hyperlinks and embedded content, and I model this in my comments, but I also understand I can’t have everything.

Overall, from student reflections and informal conversations I learned that during the remote/online learning semesters of the Academic year 2020-21 this system of frequent and regular peer feedback worked: students had their favourite commentators, and their favourite writers (whom they could seek out in extra credit exercises, or just because they appreciated their view on the history we were studying), and they felt that an asynchronous class could still have a community feel. Not bad, for a tiny tool that lives in your menu bar!

I’d love to hear about your experience with Hypothes.is, and how you or your students have used it! Leave a message in the comments below, please!