Gregory Allar presented an asynchronous Lilly Conference session last year about annotating readings using Hypothes.is for deeper learning. Allar mentioned annotating creates “anchored context for conversation”. Allar went on to describe how they use Hypothes.is in several courses and a variety of assignments. Allar uses annotation for engagement and so that students interact with texts before discussions, for example. Allar’s students mentioned annotation helped create community and promote the exchange of ideas. Allar creates Hypothes.is groups for annotation and presented several pre class annotation assignments. The prompts used varied, and they all seemed to include instructions for annotation and links to Hypothes.is help. A colleague of Allar mentioned that maybe using less structure or more open ended prompts Kay work better, so Allar used different wording for another assignment: what do you perceive as the most controversial statement? Another example was an assignment about electronic waste, and students were asked to respond with an image, link to another relevant topic, or video. This is fantastic, as I am using Hypothes.is and intrigued by the different prompts people use. Also, the BIT 295 course I’m designing focuses on electronic waste issues and biotechnology. Allar went on to describe another assignment in which students used tags such as #Tag and then use this to learn about connections. We have learned from the Hypothes.is group and Remi Kalir about visualizing connections using different tools. Allar also asks students to include audio comments in discussion forums to personalize and humanize learning. I enjoy learning about the assignment setup, prompts, and assessments used by others when using Hypothes.is. Allar used Hypothes.is in four different courses and seems very excited to continue investigating. I also really like the audio comments used in discussion forums. Allar did a nice job concisely explaining annotation and the power of Hypothes.is. I love learning about how others use Hypothes.is and look forward to improving our own prompts and activities with the goal of deeper reading and rich discussions.
