Hypothes.is

Hypothesis logo in dark red

During the pandemic, the Provost's Office used emergency funds to purchase licenses for software to support the increased need for effective online instruction. The Provost is now asking that CSUs fund such software on their instructional budgets – as was the practice before the pandemic. Starting in Fall 2024, the Provost’s Office will no longer provide central funding for Hypothesis Links to an external site..

What is Hypothesis?

Hypothes.is enables instructors and students to digitally “write in the margins” of course readings and other internet resources. It allows for individual “annotation assignments” or group collaborations.

Note: In order to annotate with Hypothesis, the pdf file needs to be OCR optimized (Optical Character Recognition). For example, you can't select a piece of text that is not seen as text. For a scanned file to be transformed into "text" and not just an image, additional software such as Adobe Acrobat Professional is required (not just the reader).

Getting Started with Hypothesis in Canvas Links to an external site.

Using the Hypothesis App with Assignments in Canvas

Using the Hypothesis app within Assignments Links to an external site. allows some additional functionality over creating Module Items Links to an external site.. Instructors can assess student work in SpeedGrader Links to an external site., assign the reading/annotating to a particular Canvas Group Links to an external site. and also set due dates or dates of availability for the Assignment.

Using Canvas Groups to Create Hypothesis Reading Groups

Hypothesis allows you to create small reading groups using Canvas’ built-in Groups functionality, which provides enormous flexibility to build and manage your own student reading groups.

Some examples of the kinds of reading groups you can create:

Have Canvas automatically create and populate groups based on either how many groups you want, or how many students you want in each group
Automatically create groups to match existing course section membership
Create one group containing all students — useful if Hypothesis defaults to splitting reading groups up based on sections and you prefer to have all students working together
Create one group per student — useful for 1:1 annotation between student and instructor
Or customize group membership in any other way that makes sense for your course and assigned readings

More information about creating and using Canvas Groups can be found here Links to an external site..

When creating a new Hypothesis reading, either as an assignment Links to an external site. or part of a module Links to an external site., you will be prompted during set-up to choose to configure the reading as a group assignment.

Important: Make sure you configured your Canvas Groups before beginning to create a new Hypothesis reading.

At this window, simply check the box to indicate This is a group assignment and select from the drop-down list an existing Canvas Group Set that reflects your desired reading groups.

As the instructor, when you open the Hypothesis reading you will see each group listed in the drop-down at the top of the Hypothesis sidebar. To view annotations for a group, select the group name from the list.

Guide - Using Canvas Groups to Create Hypothesis Reading Groups Links to an external site.

Canvas Course Import and Hypothesis

Hypothesis readings in Canvas are fully compatible with Canvas’ Course Import tool. If your Assignment or Module was created using a publicly-accessible URL or a PDF stored in Google Drive then the reading should work properly when copied into another Canvas Section or Course without any further work. If your Assignment or Module was created using a PDF from Canvas Files, however, Hypothesis does require that the instructor complete a few short steps to allow the readings to be accessible in the new course.

If you are teaching with Hypothesis and have copied Hypothesis-enabled readings that use PDFs in Canvas Files, please follow the steps below:

If the original source course date is prior to September, 2021, please visit the source course and open any Hypothesis assignment that uses Canvas Files.

This step allows Hypothesis to perform a one-time sync of course file data on the original Canvas course, and can occur either before or after the course import process.

You will only need to open one Hypothesis assignment to allow the data from all assignments to sync.

Note that you must access the assignment using an account with instructor privileges in the original source course.

After the Canvas course import is complete, visit the new destination course and open any Hypothesis assignment that uses Canvas Files.

This step allows Hypothesis to perform a one-time sync of course file data on the new destination Canvas course.

You will only need to open one Hypothesis assignment to allow the data from all assignments to sync.

Note that you must access the assignment using an account with instructor privileges in the new destination course.

After completing the above steps all copied Hypothesis assignments should open for students successfully. If you continue to encounter issues or error messages related to Canvas files access, please see Fixing a Broken Canvas File Link Links to an external site. for additional troubleshooting.

Guide - Canvas Course Import and Hypothesis Links to an external site.

Here are some resources to get started with Hypothes.is:

Tip: You can click 'R' to rotate the file image before annotating.

Hypothes.is Help Topics and Ask a Question Links to an external site.