The Office of Distance Education is excited to announce that it is launching a pilot for social annotation tool Hypothesis. Social annotation takes the practice of annotation—or adding explanatory notes to a text—to digital platforms where this learning practice can serve as a collaborative exercise, rather than an individualized and isolated one. Using Hypothesis—an online tool designed to allow for collaborative annotation across the web—makes it easy for teachers to guide students through the active process of engaging with course materials through the practice of social annotation. As one among many tools used for the purpose of social annotation, Hypothesis is built on an open-source platform and has a strong, stated position on student privacy, and its emphasis on user experience, clean interface, and ease of use make it a great choice for a tool to try in your classroom.

The Office of Distance Education (ODE) in the College of Arts and Sciences is piloting the integration of Hypothesis for use within Carmen course pages starting now through summer term. This integration makes using Hypothesis in your course for groups, discussions, and assignments simple. Hypothesis brings discussion directly to course content by enabling students and teachers to add comments and start conversations in the margins of instructional texts and other resources. As a part of ODE’s commitment to accessibility and transparency for running this pilot, ODE and ASC Accessibility developed an Equally Effective Access Accommodation Plan (EEAAP), which in turn had to approved by the university’s Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Coordinator’s Office. Instructors wishing to take part in this pilot will have to include some pre-prepared language in their course syllabi and will work with ODE and ASC Accessibility to ensure reasonable accommodations can be made for any students should this be necessary. For more information on the EEAAP for this pilot, see details here.

If you are interested in joining the growing number of faculty and staff that have already signed up to take part in this pilot, please contact ascode@osu.edu using the email subject heading “Carmen Hypothesis Pilot.” ODE has prepared an instructional course in Carmen with helpful tutorials, examples, and templates for your immediate use as you think about how Hypothesis can serve as a useful tool within your classroom. The ODE instructional design team is also ready to assist with one-on-one consultations for building course content using Hypothesis. If you’d like to explore a bit more before making a commitment, explore some public samples of documents annotated with Hypothesis from a range of universities and get a sense for the ways in which annotations are being used by visiting Examples of Classroom Use.

For any questions about this program please reach out to ascode@osu.edu.