About Hypothesis
The Leading Social Annotation Platform for Higher Education
Hypothesis is used by 300+ institutions and over 3 million annotators to make reading active, visible, and collaborative—generating over 95 million annotations across more than 120,000 courses.
Integrates directly into your LMS via LTI
What Hypothesis Does
A Collaborative Layer on Top of Course Readings
Hypothesis places a collaborative annotation layer on top of digital course materials inside the LMS. Students highlight passages, ask questions, and respond to peers directly in the margins of assigned readings—turning passive consumption into structured, peer-to-peer conversation that happens on the text itself.
What started with HTML pages and PDFs has expanded to cover EPUB files, YouTube videos, and content from exclusive integration partners like VitalSource and JSTOR. Instructors use Hypothesis to design active reading assignments, assess comprehension, and create visible evidence of student engagement.
Annotations sync with LMS gradebooks, including Canvas SpeedGrader, giving instructors a complete view of reading activity without leaving their existing grading workflow. For institutions, Hypothesis provides centralized provisioning, FERPA-compliant data handling, LTI 1.3 integration, and single sign-on through the LMS.
Social annotation is the practice of highlighting, commenting, and responding to text collaboratively in a shared digital environment. Unlike private note-taking, social annotation makes student thinking visible to peers and instructors directly on the source material, enabling real-time dialogue, peer learning, and measurable reading engagement.
Hypothesis by the Numbers
Scale, Reach, and Institutional Trust
Our Story
Built for the Open Web. Refined for Higher Education.
Why Institutions Choose Hypothesis
Purpose-Built for the Way Higher Education Actually Works
LMS-Native Integration
Hypothesis integrates directly into Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, D2L Brightspace, and Sakai via LTI. Students and faculty never leave their existing workflow. Assignments, annotations, and grades stay inside the LMS.
Visible Reading Engagement
Social annotation creates a measurable record of student reading. Instructors see who engaged, what they highlighted, and how they responded to peers—replacing guesswork with concrete evidence.
Human-Centered Learning Design
In an era when AI can generate summaries without reading, social annotation creates accountability through genuine intellectual engagement. Students must read closely, think critically, and articulate ideas in their own words—on the text itself.
FERPA Compliance & Institutional Security
Hypothesis is designed for institutional deployment: FERPA-compliant data handling, single sign-on through the LMS, centralized provisioning, and data processing agreements. Student data stays within the institution’s control.
Proven Outcomes at Scale
Research supports what instructors observe: social annotation improves reading comprehension, increases critical thinking, and drives higher participation rates in both in-person and online courses.
Broad Content Compatibility
Annotate HTML pages, PDFs, EPUB files, YouTube videos, and content from VitalSource and JSTOR. Hypothesis works with virtually any digital text your institution already uses.
Who We Serve
Built for Every Role in the Academic Experience
Our Values
What We Stand For
Build for the Long Term
Our open-source origins taught us to think in decades, not quarters. We build standards-based infrastructure that institutions can rely on.
Earn Trust Through Transparency
Our codebase is open. Our data practices are clear. We don’t monetize student data, and we never will.
Measure What Matters
We care about reading engagement, comprehension, and student outcomes—not vanity metrics.
Stay Close to the Classroom
Everything we build starts with a real need from faculty and students. We don’t build features looking for problems.
Ready to Make Reading Active at Your Institution?
Join 300+ colleges and universities already using Hypothesis.
Frequently Asked Questions
Social annotation is the practice of highlighting, commenting, and discussing text collaboratively in a shared digital environment. It makes student reading visible and interactive, enabling peer-to-peer dialogue directly on course materials.
Hypothesis integrates directly with Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, D2L Brightspace, and Sakai via LTI 1.3.
Yes. Hypothesis is designed for institutional deployment with FERPA-compliant data handling, single sign-on through the LMS, centralized provisioning, and data processing agreements.
Hypothesis supports annotation of web pages, PDFs, EPUB files, YouTube videos, and content from exclusive partners including VitalSource and JSTOR.
Hypothesis creates accountability through genuine intellectual engagement. Students must read closely, think critically, and articulate ideas in their own words directly on the text — making it a tool for human-centered, AI-resistant learning without surveillance.