Using the Hypothesis Extension for Charting, Peer Review and Feedback

What is Hypothesis, & What Will We Do With it?

This semester we will make modest use of the annotation and bookmarking tool “Hypothesis.” The tool is very simple to use and has applications that seem a good fit for writing classes.

Hypothesis is a web browser extension that lets you annotate online documents (web pages, pdfs, and Word docs.) These annotations can be shared and seen by everyone, or just by people in a group you create. For more on Hypothesis, what it is used for, and the philosophy behind it, see

How to Use Hypothes.is

The quick and dirty guide for teachers: See To help your students use it share this link:
A longer answer. The home page for Hypothes.is is The easiest way to use the tool is to add it to the Chrome web browser (or Firefox with a bookmarklet –see below. Other browsers don’t work). On the Hypothes.is page there is an “Install” button that will add the extension to your Chrome browser. You can also use Hypothes.is with the Firefox browser, but you will need to add a “bookmarklet” instead of an extension. The bookmarklet is also on the main home page (look for the link under the “Install” button). Note that the bookmarklet does not seem to work well with other browsers. You will be need to submit your email address to get an account and get started. Using it is fairly simple. Once you have installed it an icon will appear at the top of your browser. You may need to click on the icon if it is “shaded” and thus not active.

After that, once you visit a web page and select some text, click on the Hypothesis extension, and a menu will appear at the side of the web page (you may need to click on the “expand” button to make it come out fully). You will see an “annotate” and a “highlight” tool. If you select annotate, you will be able to tag the page, and insert notes. If someone else has already made a comment, you can reply to it.

Hypothes.is will email you a summary of your annotations. If you create a group, it will also email you the annotations made by others.

There is a very useful page with help for teachers who want to use the tool in class. See I particularly recommend you learn how to use groups:

How to create groups:
Annotating with Groups:

If you want to explore the tool further, here are some other helpful resources:

10 Ways to Annotate with Students

Quick Start Guide for Teachers

Quick Start Guide for Students

Annotation Tips for Students

Creating a Private Group

Annotating with Groups

For model assignments, product tutorials, teacher testimonials, and much more, visit the Educator Resource Guide. Direct your students to the Student Resource Guide for student-centered materials from tips for best annotation practices to inspirational poetry about marginalia.

Here are some things you can do with Hypothesis in class:

Use it for collaborative reading and analysis of texts. You can look up key words, research references in the text, identify strategies, etc. The work will then be linked to the text, and as students go on to draft papers they can refer back to the work done by everyone. They can perhaps even cite this in their papers.
Students can “chart” a text (annotate the rhetorical moves) and share annotations with everyone in class. The record of everyone’s (or each group’s) response to the text will be recorded. Furthermore, students can “reply” to an annotation, helping foster conversations around texts.
See “model” readings of a text. Hypothesis can show how other expert readers have annotated texts, speeches, books, etc. Some of the texts we will read this semester have been annotated. For example, if you look at Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” you’ll see a scholar has recorded his response in the margins. (You will need to have added the extension to see this). Political speeches are starting to be publicly annotated by academics. For example, the sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom annotated Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic national Convention using Hypothesis.
Students can do some (or all) peer review work using Hypothesis. You can comment on other students’ blog posts.

Connections Between Hypothesis & RWS100 Course Texts/Topics
One reason we will experiment with Hypothesis is that it embodies some of the ideas and principles that the authors discuss. For example, Thompson talks about the importance of “public thinking” and “networked” reading and writing of texts. At the end of his chapter he asks, “What tools will create new forms of public thinking in the years to come?” His answer is that “as more forms of media become digital, they'll become sites for public thinking… Marginalia may become a new type of public thinking, with the smartest remarks from other readers becoming part of how we make sense of a book.” Thompson also discusses how reading and writing are becoming “blended,” and quotes literacy theorist Debbie Brandt: “People read in order to generate writing; we read from the posture of the writer.” Hypothesis helps make some of these ideas concrete, and also allows us to evaluate them.

Hypothesis is an example of a wave of new tools and experiments with social reading and writing. Here are a few other examples:

The annotation tools “News Genius” and “Rap Genius” let users comment on, explicate, analyze and annotate news stories and music lyrics. Rap genius is used a lot and may be of interest to students.
The Washington Post has posted annotated versions of major speeches by politicians using the annotation tool “News Genius.” They published an annotated version of Donald Trump’s speech to the Republican National Convention and Hilary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention.

The magazine platform Medium enables readers to comment on and annotate articles, follow writers and annotators, and reply to comments/annotations. You can also see the annotations written by people. Dana Boyd, one of the authors we will read, has a page on Medium. You can see all the articles she has written and also the notes she has made, and you can follow both.
There are many scholarly tools for annotating texts. Some have been developed by writing faculty. For example there is MIT's Annotation Studio, and CMU's Classroom Salon