Hypothesis Basics: Start Here

Hypothesis Basics: Start Here

Hypothesis is a collaborative annotation tool that makes reading active, visible, and social. With Hypothesis, students engage with their readings, instructors, ideas, and each other in deeper, more meaningful ways. This page provides a roadmap to using Hypothesis in Canvas.

Note about hyperlinks: links to online guides and support documents will open in a new tab. Some will link to documents on the UO Teaching Support and Innovation website. Others link to the Hypothesis Teacher Resource Guide.

For information about collaborative annotation as a teaching practice, please see our Collaborative Annotation Tools - Hypothesis and Perusall document.

NOTE: Be aware that some students may have barriers or concerns that prevent them from using Hypothesis in your course. To ensure that all students have equitable access to learning, we invite you to consider and provide alternative ways for students to engage with your course content and meet the assignment objectives. For more information on using digital tools, see the External Vendor Digital Tools in Teaching resource (opens in a new tab).

If you'd like to consult with UO Online about how to use Hypothesis in your courses, please contact us.

Table of Contents

Hypothesis & PDF Documents

IMPORTANT!

PDFs are likely the most common document type you might use with Hypothesis. If you want your students to annotate the text of a PDF document, you must ensure that they contain "selectable text." Selectable text means that the PDFs are not images of text, but text that can be highlighted. If your PDF is a scanned image, it must be put through the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process for students to be able to annotate the text. If you only plan to have students annotate art, photographs, graphs, or historical documents, you do not need to put the PDF through the OCR process. 

If you need assistance determining if your PDFs are images or contain selectable text, or with using OCR to convert your PDFs, please refer to the Creating Text Based PDFs for Hypothesis and Perusall How To document.

Assignment Set-Up

Before creating the assignment, be sure to upload the PDF students will annotate to Canvas files or locate the URL for a webpage or online PDF that will be used in the assignment.

If students will be completing the assignment in smaller groups, create the Canvas Group Set first.

  • Navigate to your Assignments page and click the "+ Assignment" button.
  • Enter the Assignment Name, Instructions, Points, and Assignment Group (if using).
Canvas Assignments page showing +Assignment button.
  • In the the Submission Type field, select External Tool from the drop-down menu and and click Find.
Canvas Submission Type options with "External Tool" and "Find" selected

Configure External Tool

Scroll through the External Tools list and select Hypothesis. The Link Resource from External Tool dialog box will open. Here you will select the Assignment Content. The most common options are:

  1. Linking to a URL Webpage | PDF
    • Select the URL Web Page | PDF option and type the URL of the web page or PDF.
  2. Linking to a Canvas PDF File
    • The first time you choose Select PDF from Canvas, you may see the Authorize dialog box. Click on Authorize and the Canvas dialogue box for Authorizing Access will appear. Click the Authorize button again to give Hypothesis access to your Canvas files.
    • Once you've authorized Hypothesis to access Canvas files, a new dialog box will appear showing a list of PDF files that are in the Canvas File repository for the course will appear.
    • Click on the title of the file to use.
    • Click Select. ​​​​​​
  3. Linking to a OneDrive PDF file
    • The first time Select a PDF from OneDrive is chosen, you may need to log-into your Microsoft uoregon.edu account.
    • After entering the account information for the OneDrive account, a window opens showing the user's My Files view in OneDrive.
    • Navigate to the PDF to be used in the assignment, select the file, and click Open.
  4. Linking to YouTube videos or JSTOR articles
    1. For information on linking to YouTube videos in Hypothesis, see Hypothesis' Annotating YouTube Videos with Hypothesis guide.
    2. For information on using JSTOR articles with Hypothesis, see Hypothesis' Using Hypothesis with JSTOR guide. 
Hypothesis link resource from external tool option in Canvas

Using Groups in Hypothesis Assignments

Hypothesis uses Canvas Group Sets when the Hypothesis assignment is to be completed in groups. The Group Set and Groups must be created in Canvas before the Hypothesis Assignment is created. See How to Manually Create Groups in Canvas  for group set-up in Canvas.

  • In the Hypothesis Assignment Details section, select the box "This is a group assignment" and then select the Group Set from the drop-down menu.
Hypothesis in Canvas showing Group Assignment selection of Hypothesis Groups

For more information about groups and Hypothesis, see Hypothesis' Using Canvas Groups to Create Hypothesis Reading Groups.

Grading Student Annotations in Canvas

Hypothesis assignments are graded in SpeedGrader. For instructions on grading a Hypothesis assignment in Canvas, see the Hypothesis article Grading Student Annotations in Canvas.

Introducing Students to Hypothesis

Please see the Hypothesis article Introduction to Hypothesis LMS App for Students.

 

For further assistance, UO Online & Canvas Support are available.

  • In-Person: Room 68 PLC
  • By phone: (541) 346-1942
  • By email: uoonline@uoregon.edu
  • Submit a Service Portal Ticket (opens in a new tab). This form can also be accessed in Canvas from the Help button at the bottom of the Global Navigation Menu.