Hypothesis Partner Workshops

Getting Started Workshops: August and September 2024

Quick Start Workshops: Learn Hypothesis in your LMS

On Tuesdays at 10am PT/1pm ET, the Hypothesis team will share how instructors are using collaborative annotation to help students develop foundational academic skills like deep reading and critical thinking. In addition to sharing pedagogical best practices for social annotation, we will demonstrate how Hypothesis is used with course readings in Canvas. Participants will gain a clear understanding of how to start incorporating social annotation into their courses to improve student outcomes.

Register for a session to learn how to use Hypothesis in Blackboard, Canvas, D2L Brightspace, or Moodle.
Register Here

• • Blackboard: 8/13/24 or 9/10/24
  • Canvas: 8/20/24 or 9/24/24
  • D2L Brightspace: 8/27/24 or 9/17/24
  • Moodle: 9/3/24

Back to School Fridays: Starting the term with Hypothesis

Annotate Your Syllabus

Asking your class to annotate the syllabus allows you to introduce students to social annotation in a low-stakes way. Even better, you’re providing them with an opportunity to engage with the syllabus, to share ideas and to ask questions about the course in a way that sets the tone for engagement throughout the term. In this workshop, the Hypothesis team will review ideas and guidance for the collaborative syllabus annotation assignment.

• • Friday, 8/23/24 at 10am PT/1pm ET
  • Friday, 9/20/24 at 10am PT/1pm ET

Register here

Annotation Starter Assignments

This workshop is ideal for instructors who are interested in using social annotation in their courses but aren’t exactly sure how to provide guidance to students. The Hypothesis team will review ideas for annotation starter assignments and provide you with ready-to-use instructions for a variety of disciplines and modalities. It doesn’t matter if you’re teaching humanities, business, STEM, or the health professions, or if you’re teaching face-to-face or online — you’ll get strategies from this workshop that you can add immediately to an assignment in your course.

• • Friday, 9/13/24 at 10am PT/1pm ET

Register here

Hypothesis Tuesday Tech Tips: Using small groups in your LMS

On Tuesdays at 10:45am PT/1:45pm ET, the Hypothesis team will review how to set up small groups in your LMS and create Hypothesis-enabled assignments using these small groups. These will be quick, 15 minute technical sessions. Ideally, participants are familiar with using Hypothesis. Note: these will occur after the Quick Start sessions listed above.

Register for a session to learn how to use small groups with Hypothesis in Blackboard, Canvas, D2L Brightspace, or Moodle.
Register Here

• • Blackboard: 8/13/24 or 9/10/24
  • Canvas: 8/20/24 or 9/24/24
  • D2L Brightspace: 8/27/24 or 9/17/24
  • Moodle: 9/3/24

Hypothesis Thursday Tech Tips: New Features

On Thursdays at 4pm ET, the Hypothesis team will host a quick review of a recently released Hypothesis feature. These sessions are short, 15 minute trainings designed to get you up-to-speed on a new Hypothesis feature. Ideally, attendees will already be familiar with using Hypothesis. 

Register for any of the Tech Tips: New Features Sessions.
Register Here

• • 8/15/24: Course copy with export/import
  • 8/22/24: Annotating video
  • 8/29/24: Instructor dashboards
  • 9/5/24: Course copy with export/import
  • 9/12/24: Annotating video
  • 9/19/24: Instructor dashboards

Social Annotation Strategies: October 2024

Join us for our October workshop series to learn more about specific strategies for successful social annotation (yes, that alliteration was on purpose)! During October, we’ll explore teaching strategies related to using Hypothesis based on various course characteristics or circumstances. Each session will give you sample instructions to use in or adapt for your course right away.

All workshops take place on Thursdays at 11:30am PT/2:30pm ET.

• 10/3/24: Social annotation for large courses
• 10/10/24: Social annotation for STEM subjects
• 10/17/24: Research-based strategies for social annotation
• 10/24/24: Social annotation for textbooks

Register for as many of the sessions as you’d like.
Register Here

Session Descriptions:

Social Annotation For Large Courses

Creating an active learning experience in large enrollment courses can be challenging. Incorporating Hypothesis social annotation into your large courses can promote greater learner engagement with course materials, which can lead to better comprehension, retention, and analysis of course content. In this workshop, the Hypothesis team will review strategies for structuring annotation assignments to best manage substantial student annotation activity. We’ll also suggest grading approaches for social annotation assignments to keep grading time to a minimum. Participants can expect to come away from this session with a clear idea about how they can expand their usage of collaborative annotation in their courses to improve student success.

Social Annotation For STEM Subjects

The Hypothesis team will discuss how collaborative annotation with Hypothesis can be used to make student reading visible, active, and social in STEM courses. Social annotation’s collaborative and metacognitive nature can encourage students to tackle difficult concepts in a new way. For example, social annotation can assist students in identifying patterns and relationships, in analyzing the validity of arguments and/or solutions, and in locating and contextualizing important information in problems. Additionally, it can give instructors an opportunity to guide students through texts or course materials asynchronously.

Research-based Strategies For Social Annotation

In this workshop, the Hypothesis team will review two pedagogical approaches for social annotation assignments as described in peer-reviewed research: expansive framing and participation roles. This will include describing each pedagogical strategy’s goals for student learning.  We’ll discuss how to implement each of these pedagogical approaches in your teaching and why they are effective for social annotation practice in particular. We’ll also explore the findings of the research and considerations for real-world application. Participants can expect to come away with new insights and strategies for implementing Hypothesis social annotation in their classrooms.

Social Annotation For Textbooks

Collaboratively annotating the textbook allows us to organize our thinking, build academic vocabulary, summarize main ideas, interpret visuals,  answer questions, and make visible connections in key sections. Consistently practicing these thinking strategies in the margins, allows students to build active reading engagement over time in a large text. In this workshop, the Hypothesis team will review ideas and guidance for annotating an online textbook. Participants can expect to come away from this session with concrete ideas on how they can begin using social annotation with either open textbooks or VitalSource etexts right away in their courses.

Social annotation for student retention and success: November 2024

Join us for our November workshop series and take a pedagogical deep dive into social annotation! During November, we’ll explore teaching strategies related to Hypothesis in your courses, specifically geared toward increasing student retention and success. Register for as many sessions as you’d like to attend below. If you register and attend all three workshops, you’ll receive a Certificate of Attendance for the November 2024 Seminar in Social Annotation as a PDF certificate you can share.

All workshops take place Thursdays at 11:30am PT/2:30pm ET.

• 11/7/24: Social annotation for equity and belonging
• 11/14/24: Hypothesis: Designing with UDL in mind
• 11/21/24: Grading and feedback for social annotation

Register for as many sessions as you’d like to attend.
Register Here

Session Descriptions:

Social annotation for equity and belonging

The Hypothesis team will share how instructors can implement Hypothesis social annotation into their courses in order to increase equity and belonging amongst students. We’ll first broadly discuss pedagogical strategies for increasing equity and belonging in teaching and learning. Then, we’ll dive into specific strategies instructors can use with Hypothesis social annotation in their own courses. Participants can expect to come away from the workshop with concrete assignment ideas for using Hypothesis social annotation with equity and belonging in mind.

Hypothesis: Designing with UDL in mind

Using multiple means of representation (text, images, and video) is a key principle of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and can help students better comprehend and retain essential course concepts. Hypothesis recently introduced YouTube video transcript annotation as a new feature as well as the ability to annotate articles directly from the JSTOR database. In addition, Hypothesis annotations can include links, images, text, and videos. Christie from the Hypothesis team will discuss multimodal learning as a core principle of UDL, and how using YouTube video annotation alongside text annotation with scholarly sources like JSTOR can help incorporate multimodal learning in your course. She’ll demonstrate how to set up YouTube video & JSTOR annotation assignments with Hypothesis and review how to add multimedia to annotations.

Grading and feedback for social annotation

While there are multiple options for grading in Hypothesis, the importance of incentivizing participation cannot be overstated. To help spark interest in annotation, instructors need to provide clear guidelines that reward high-quality contributions. In this workshop, the Hypothesis team will present foundational components in creating either an analytic or holistic rubric for annotation, as well as establishing a framework for effective feedback. Social annotation lends the ideal format for assessing and promoting continuous learning, so join this session to gather ideas and tools to take your grading and feedback practices to the next level.