This feature requires that advanced Canvas integration has been enabled. For other methods to implement reading groups in your LMS, see How to Assign Hypothesis Readings to Small Groups.
A note about Hypothesis and Canvas Sections integration
These instructions only apply if the Canvas Sections integration has been turned on for your school. By default the Canvas Sections integration is turned off for most schools who have installed Hypothesis after 2021. Instructors who wish to have Hypothesis readings split into groups based on Canvas Sections should instead follow the instructions at Using Canvas Groups to Create Hypothesis Reading Groups.
If you are uncertain whether your school has Canvas Sections integration turned on or not, please contact us!
What are Sections?
In Canvas, Sections are groups of students within a Course that have been organized for administrative purposes, usually by a Student Information System (SIS). When students are enrolled in a Course, they are actually enrolled in one of the Sections of that Course, as every Canvas Course has at least one Section.
In general, Courses that have more than one Section are either large lecture-style classes, or are taught multiple times in one semester by one instructor. Classes with fewer students and only one offering per instructor tend to have one Section that contains all students in the Course. For more information, see this Canvas help article: What is the hierarchical structure for Canvas accounts?
How do Section groups work in the Hypothesis LMS app?
In order to make the annotation experience better for Courses that contain multiple Sections and/or many students, a Hypothesis group is created for each Section in a Course, rather than one group for the whole Course. Instructors, TAs, and Admins will have access to all Sections and students will only have access to the Section(s) they belong to.
To understand how this will work, let’s consider some examples:
Large-enrollment courses with multiple Sections
Psychology 101 is a lecture-style course with 100 students that has a recitation component where students meet in groups of 20 with a TA. This course has 5 Sections, each with 20 students, grouped according to their recitation. All 100 students meet with Professor A twice per week. Professor A uses one Canvas Course to manage all 5 Sections of the Course.
When Professor A creates a Hypothesis-enabled assignment, students will annotate with their Section only. Professor A can see and participate in conversations in all 5 Sections separately, whereas each student can only see and create annotations in their own Section:
Small-enrollment courses taught by one instructor to multiple groups of students
Professor B teaches a seminar-style Writing 404 course that meets with 1 set of 10 students on Mondays and Wednesdays at 2pm and meets with another set of 12 students on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 2pm. This Course has 2 Sections: one for the Monday-Wednesday students and one for the Tuesday-Thursday students.
When Professor B creates a Hypothesis-enabled assignment, the Monday-Wednesday students will annotate only among themselves, and the Tuesday-Thursday students will similarly annotate only with each other. Professor B can see and participate in conversations with both groups of students separately, whereas each student can only see and create annotations in their own Section:
Small-enrollment courses taught by one instructor to one set of students
Professor C teaches a seminar-style Writing 404 course made up of 10 students who meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9am. This is the only offering of this course that Professor C teaches. This course has just 1 Section for all 10 students.
Since there is only one Section in the Course, all students will annotate together:
Other courses
If you’re unsure how our Sections feature will work in your Course, contact us and a Success specialist will discuss the specifics of your Course with you.