Summer courses are fast-paced, content-heavy, and often harder to manage—for both instructors and students. That’s why we hosted a special session last week with Hypothesis Customer Success Manager Brian Malone, who shared practical strategies for designing engaging, flexible, and collaborative summer learning experiences.
Here’s what we learned—and how you can apply it to your own course planning.
Why Summer Courses Are Challenging
Between compressed timelines and fewer touchpoints, summer courses pack a lot into a short window. As Brian put it:
“Summer students are often coming off a long academic year, juggling work or family responsibilities, and looking to move fast through content.”
Add in beautiful weather and general burnout, and it’s no surprise that reading engagement, class participation, and student connection can take a hit. That’s where social annotation comes in.
How Hypothesis Helps Instructors Meet the Moment
Hypothesis turns reading into a shared, visible experience—something especially powerful in short, high-pressure courses. Instead of assigning a reading and hoping students engage, instructors can:
- Make participation visible before class even starts
- Build community asynchronously through peer-to-peer interaction
- Identify confusion or misunderstanding in real time
- Reduce reliance on discussion boards while creating actual discussion
“Reading is typically passive—we assign it and hope students engage. Hypothesis makes it active, visible, and social.” – Brian Malone
Strategies You Can Use Right Away
- Start with the Syllabus
Have students annotate your syllabus on Day 1. It’s a low-stakes activity that sets expectations and invites questions. It also helps students get familiar with the tool before content-heavy assignments begin. - Embed Prompts Directly in the Reading
Instructors can annotate their own texts to model engagement. Ask questions, link to resources, or invite reflection. With page notes or in-line prompts, you can guide the reading experience naturally. - Use @Mentions to Spark Conversation
One of Hypothesis’ newest features—@mentions—lets instructors and students tag each other in annotations, sending real-time notifications that bring people back into the conversation. It’s perfect for nudging participation in short summer terms. - Track Engagement with the Instructor Dashboard
Hypothesis’ dashboard shows who’s reading, annotating, and replying—without adding grading headaches. Combined with our auto-grading feature, it helps keep your teaching load manageable.
Coming Soon: Annotate More Than Just Text
Brian also gave attendees a preview of our next big feature: Image Annotations.
“You’ll soon be able to place pins and draw boxes directly on images within PDFs. Whether you’re teaching art, anatomy, or data analysis, this opens up huge opportunities.”
This upcoming update will allow instructors and students to comment directly on visual elements—like graphs, maps, tables, and even scanned pages. It works on native and scanned PDFs, and integrates right into the Hypothesis sidebar.
Takeaways from Faculty Q&A
Instructors attending the webinar asked insightful questions about:
- Using Hypothesis to teach annotation quality with examples and non-examples
- Leveraging annotations for formative assessment
- Detecting AI-generated responses through authentic student engagement
- Replacing discussion boards with more interactive reading-based dialogue
“Annotation turns reading into conversation—before class even starts.”
Make Summer Count—with Less Work
Summer courses don’t need to feel rushed or disconnected. With the right tools and strategies, you can create an experience that’s active, student-centered, and community-driven—without overwhelming yourself or your learners.
Want to See It in Action?