hypothes.is is a great way for and your students to bring web pages, PDFs, or ebooks alive with:

• highlights

• mark up

• notes or comments

• discussion

This keeps discussions and your instructor guidance grounded in the material and helps students refer directly to the text instead of talking generally about it.  

Here are some situations where hypothes.is could be a perfect fit:

• Having discussions within the text to get students used to providing citations and/or text-based evidence to their statements

• Having layered discussions about a text where some comments are viewed by team members, other by the class, and still others to global public

• Leaving instructor comments and guidance in context to the readings

• Highlighting instances where the current text was influenced by a previously studied text

• Highlighting allusions to another text

• Providing definitions in the text at the point of need

• Having discussions within the text to get students used to providing citations and/or text-based evidence to their statements

• Directing students to connect a certain passage to:

  • • Another part of the same text

    • Ideas from a previously-studied text

    • Historical context

    • Their own experience

• Identifying instances of concepts/principles/strategies (e.g. ethos, pathos, & logos)

• Sharing thoughts on materials curated for a research project

 THEA 230: Development of Theater 1:

(Created by Teresa Focarile with assistance from Monica Brown and Ben Croft)

Teresa knew there were two things she wanted to change about her course: ease the financial burden on the students, and get her students to cite evidence from the readings. 

• A nice example of a student commenting about a specific passage in the text

• Explanation and directions for a specific hypothes.is activity

Example from a Michigan State Class

This is a publicly available example of what a hypothes.is-enabled document looks like. The link will not work without the hypothes.is extension installed, so we are sharing a screenshot.  You may also see the analytics report.

• Screenshot of a hypothes.is "conversation" from this class

• Example analytics and engagement report via CROWDLAAERS

Some nice features

• Annotations and comments can be restricted to members of a class, a group within a class, specific people, or anyone in the world

• Comments need not be print; you can also add images, LaTex, and links to web pages, YouTube videos, etc.

• One web page or document can have different layers, so some comments can be for the whole class, others can be to members of a group, and still others can be to a specific person

• hypothes.is works with a learning analytics tool to facilitate grading. This tool will give you a dashboard showing who has posted, how many times, the length of posts, how many replies each participant has gotten, etc.

• There is a browser extension for Chrome and a "bookmarklet" for Firefox, Safari and other browsers. This makes it easy to start and access comments and discussions.

• You can use hypothes.is with PDFs stored in your Blackboard course's Content Collection

• hypothes.is works with the Pressbooks ebook/OER platform

Grading

• There are features that make grading easier in Blackboard

Possible limitations

• Highlights are only available in yellow unless you do some scripting yourself

• The Boise State Help Desk does not support this tool (yet)

• hypothes.is doesn't work on documents stored in Google Drive

how-to's, privacy, accessibility, references, & support

• Information on this can be found in the hypothes.is Resource Guide prepared by eCampus' Research & Innovation team

Further Support

• If you would like instructional design and technical support for integrating this technology into your online course, email stephaniechism@boisestate.edu

To try it out, go to the hypothes.is Get Started page and follow the directions.