Creating Hypothesis-Enabled Readings in Moodle

This explains how to create a Hypothesis-enabled reading assignment. The app allows you to share a webpage or PDF document with the Hypothesis sidebar automatically added within the LMS. If you have not installed Hypothesis in Moodle yet, see:

1. Navigate to your course page in Moodle

a. Click the button in the upper-right to Turn editing on.

Location of "Turn editing on" button

2. Add an activity

Location of "Add an activity or resource" link

b. In the “Add an activity” window, select “External tool”

Note: The Hypothesis app may be configured to appear directly in the activity list below. If so, you can select it directly.

Location of "External tool" option

c. Configure your activity for a Hypothesis reading

  • Activity name:
    • This should be something specific to the assignment, like “Didion reading” or “Annotate Baldwin poem”.
  • Preconfigured tool:
    • Select Hypothesis from the drop-down. Note: You may not need to complete this step if either a) your campus Moodle administrator has installed the Hypothesis app for you or b) the tool has been configured to be chosen from the activity dropdown.Location of Hypothesis in Preconfigured tool drop-down
  • Tool URL:
    • Leave blank

To enable grading (optional):

  • Under Privacy, make sure “Accept grades from the tool” is checked.
    Location of "Accept grades from the tool"
  • Under Grade, make sure Type is set to “Point”.
    Location of grade "Type" and "Maximum points"
  • Your Maximum grade can be any number, though in the Hypothesis grading panel you’ll give each student a score out of 10 points. This score is a percentage which is then applied to the Maximum grade. For example, if you set Maximum grade to 20 points, and you gave a student a 7/10 in the Hypothesis grading panel, the student’s final grade would be 14 points (because 70% of 20 is 14).

Click the button to Save and display.

3. Configure the Hypothesis reading

Depending on how the activity has been configured (Launch Container setting), the Hypothesis reading will either open immediately (embedded in the active window), or you will see a link to Open in a new window. If you see this link, click to open the reading in a new tab.

Location of "Open in new window"

You will have the option to enter a publicly-viewable URL, select a PDF from Google Drive, or select a PDF from OneDrive.

Assignment content configuration window with document source options shown

Expand the sections below for instructions to use each option:

Click the button that says Enter URL of web page or PDF. On the Enter URL dialog, enter a link to a public web page or PDF. Please note that the content at the link must be publicly viewable (i.e., not behind a login or paywall).

Enter URL source content window

Click the Submit button.

Click the button that says Select PDF from Google Drive. You will be asked to select a Google account and/or authorize the Hypothesis LMS App to access Google Drive.

Search or browse to select a PDF to use in your reading. You may also click the Upload tab to upload a new PDF to use.

Only files for which you have edit permission are able to be used by Hypothesis.

Click on the file you want to use and then click the Select button.

Google Drive picker

Note: This process will change the sharing permission of the selected Google Drive file to allow the PDF to be shown to anyone viewing the assignment. For more information please see our document about using Hypothesis with Google Drive.

Click the button that says Select PDF from OneDrive. You will be asked to select a Microsoft account and/or authorize the Hypothesis LMS App to access OneDrive.

Once logged on, browse to select a PDF to use in your reading. You may also select the Upload option to upload a new PDF to use.

Only files available in “My files” are able to be used by Hypothesis. You will be unable to use PDFs that belong in any Shared Libraries.

Click to select the file you want to use and then click the Open button.

OneDrive file picker

Note: This process will change the sharing permission of the selected OneDrive file to allow the PDF to be shown to anyone viewing the assignment. For more information please see our document about using Hypothesis with OneDrive.

Notes:

PDFs must have optically recognizable text in order to be annotatable in the Hypothesis app. If you can select text in the PDF, no further action is needed. If you can’t select text in the PDF, you’ll need to follow our instructions for how to OCR-optimize a PDF.

After selecting the URL or PDF for your assignment, you may need to refresh the page, or close and re-open the assignment, before you can start annotating.

4. Confirm the Hypothesis reading loads

You should now see the reading you selected above now loaded with the Hypothesis sidebar open.

Example Hypothesis reading in Moodle

Edit and reconfigure the Hypothesis reading assignment

At any time you can reconfigure the Hypothesis reading assignment to use a new document or group set:

  • With the reading assignment open, click Edit next to the assignment name in the Grade Bar
    Location of Edit link in the Grade Bar
  • If the assignment will not open and shows an error message, you can click the Edit assignment link at the bottom of the window
    Location of Edit Assignment link in an error message window
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