Hypothesis & Perusall Compared
Hypothesis is a social annotation tool that seamlessly integrates into the LMS, allowing educators and students to annotate over any piece of online content. Perusall is a proprietary reading platform that has a built-in social annotation capability. Both are used to enable social reading capabilities in educational contexts, like when students read texts assigned by teachers. We are providing this information to help you understand the similarities and differences between the two tools, and help you make informed decisions about which will work best for you and/or your school.
While Hypothesis and Perusall have some similarities, there are several key differences in each tool’s capabilities, and in how they work for different users, including students, teachers, and/or people using assistive technology.
Start using Hypothesis in your LMS and learn more about pricing for your school.
Side-by-side comparison inside the LMS
Note: This comparison focuses on using Hypothesis and Perusall inside a learning management system (LMS). Both tools can also be used in other contexts not covered here.
Hypothesis |
Perusall |
|
|---|---|---|
| How it works | Students and educators can annotate over any material directly within the LMS. Allowing single sign on for students using their LMS logins. | Students and teachers annotate readings purchased within or uploaded to Perusall. Students will need to login to the Perusall account to access. |
| Types of documents/files you can annotate | You can use Hypothesis to annotate over any piece of online content including webpages, online articles, online PDFs, YouTube videos, text file, JSTOR content, or within Bookshelf by VitalSource content. | Inside Perusall, students can purchase, read, and annotate textbooks, and teachers can upload various files for student annotation, including PDFs, EPUBs, web pages, and text or MS Office files. |
| Where your annotated documents live | Documents can be live, public web pages, or can be stored in an LMS file system or on Google drive. | Documents can only be stored in the Perusall platform. |
| Who can annotate | Students and teachers annotate individually — in private — or together in groups tied to LMS class rosters. For larger classes, groups can be tied to LMS sections rosters. | Students and teachers annotate individually — in private — or together in groups tied to LMS class rosters. For larger classes, Perusall creates randomized reading groups for each new assignment. |
| Highlights, notes, and annotations | Annotations can be private or shared with the class, and each annotation can anchor threaded discussions. Highlights are private. No one can edit or delete anyone else’s annotations. | Annotations and bookmarks are private by default. When shared, student annotations can be edited or deleted by teachers and other students. Highlights without notes and threaded discussions are not supported. You can not reply to annotations in a threaded discussion. |
| What you can include in annotations | Text in any character set, links, images hosted externally, any video, equations, tags. | Text in any character set, links, images hosted internally, videos hosted externally, equations, tags. |
| Annotation anchoring | Text-selection anchors for annotations and highlights. | Text-selection anchors for annotations and bookmarks. |
| Grading | Full gradebook integration with every LMS via with IMS Global Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standards. | Native gradebook with some autograding capabilities. Instructors can sync grades to LMSs as a separate step. |
| Analytics | Dashboards with class and institutional views. | Dashboards with class views. |
| Copyright concerns | Hypothesis does not introduce new copyright concerns because content is not copied to Hypothesis. | Perusall requires teachers to assume responsibility for copyright on uploaded content. Proprietary textbooks purchased through Perusall include access rights for purchasing users. |
| Cost | There is a subscription price for institutions for each user, discounts are provided for scale. We also use a student pay model when purchasing Hypothesis through Bookshelf by Vitalsource. | Students pay full retail prices to read/annotate publisher textbooks. No cost for other uploaded documents. Perusall also offers institutional licenses with custom legal, co-branding, API access, and SLAs. |
| Research | The overwhelming majority of existing peer-reviewed scholarship on social annotation focuses on Hypothesis, which has also launched a robust program to advance additional IRB-approved research about social annotation and learning. | There is some research about Perusall. |
| Support | Full-time, dedicated customer success and support team, providing support to teachers and staff via a support ticketing system. Educators also have the opportunity to attend a workshop on social annotation or become certified in social annotation with our 2 week asynchronous course Hypothesis Academy. There are also resources created for educators including assignments created by faculty users. | Unknown support team size offering help via a support ticketing system and a public knowledge base. |
| Service level agreements | Hypothesis provides industry-standard service level agreements to partners, defining support, service availability, API, proxy service, browser extension, and sidebar client. | Perusall provides service level agreements, defining support, service availability, and administrative and analytics API. |
| Community contributions | Led development and adoption of W3C web annotation standards.
Coordinates AnnotatED community for annotation in teaching and learning. Airs Liquid Margins, the show where people gather to talk about collaborative annotation, social learning, and other ways we make knowledge together. |
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| Accessibility | Hypothesis has a comprehensive, ongoing practice to ensure accessibility. As of May 2020, Hypothesis confirmed WCAG 2.0 AA compliance with an independent assessment completed by an external auditor. | Perusall’s accessibility statement links to a VPAT 2.4 that evaluated their product against WCAG 2.1 AA compliance in December 2020, with an independent assessment completed by an external auditor. |
| Student privacy | Hypothesis supports strong student privacy standards, meeting rigorous requirements in both K12 and higher education. Hypothesis does not collect personally identifiable student information like email addresses. See what student data Hypothesis collects. | Perusall’s privacy policy describes their practices, including what information they collect and how it may be transferred to other parties. Perusall collects personally identifiable student information like email addresses. See what student data Perusall collects. |
| Security | Hypothesis is the only social annotation company that has achieved SOC 2 Type 2 compliance.
The Hypothesis HECVAT/security statement is posted publicly. |
The Perusall security statement is posted publicly. |
| Standards | Meets various IMS Global standards such as Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) to integrate with learning management systems.
Compliant with W3C web annotation standards. |
Meets various IMS Global standards such as Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) to integrate with learning management systems. |
| Codebase | Fully open-source. | Proprietary. |
Updated: 29 Mar 2021
Start using Hypothesis in your LMS and learn more about pricing for your school.