February 28, 2017
Guests: Jeremy Dean and Nate Angell
The ACTT Core Team met with Jeremy (Director of Education) and Nate (Director of Marketing) from Hypothes.is ( https://hypothes.is ). This followed A two-week “facilitated online experience” using Hypothes.is was led by Sean and Jeremy from late January to early February, and Joe, Sean, and Jeremy had a previous conversation about Middlebury adopting Hypothes.is.
What is Hypothes.is?
- All-purpose annotation tool.
- Can be used for fact-checking.
- Non-profit, open model.
- Brings back the idea of an annotated web, dropped in early Mozilla projects.
- Text is highlighted and links to annotations, which can be text, urls, audio, and video.
- Uses the W3C adopted standards for online annotation.
- Groups can be created to filter annotations. Ex. MiddAnnotate
- Can be used as a commenting feature in a document.
- Adding annotations requires an account.
- Can be installed as a Chrome browser plugin.
Plugins and Integrations
- There is a plugin for WordPress
- Creates an experience similar to CommentPress
- Is not theme dependent.
- Canvas plugin
- Can be used within Canvas, inline with pdfs.
- Can be an assignment submission type
- Can be assessed in the SpeedGrader.
- Plugins are not browser-dependent.
- Can be self-hosted, not recommended.
Challenges and Questions
- What happens when content changes?
- Answer released next week.
- All annotations are saved.
- If content changes, annotations will appear in an “orphans” tab.
- Annotations can be loaded using Internet Archive.
- Robot.txt files can block archiving.
- Diigo is similar, can you import content?
- If it uses the W3C standards
- Annotations can be exported.
- Currently, import and export for Hypothesis are supported via API. John Udell has an export utility that uses API: https://jonudell.info/h/facet.html
- Browser limitations.
- Content behind a pay-wall has limitations.
- Some answers are available in the FAQ ( https://hypothes.is/faq/ ).
Middlebury and Hypothes.is
- Some faculty and programs are using Hypothes.is.
- Accounts are not tied to Middlebury authentication.
- Course use vs. Institutional adoption
- Agreement is currently between the faculty and student for course use.
- Institutional adoption would involve:
- Integrating with existing systems (Canvas, WordPress, etc.).
- Using Middlebury authentication credentials
- Require adherence to security and data standards.
Next Steps
- Jeremy will share Education Offering documentation with team (DONE).
- Joe will share Data Classification Policy with Jeremy (DONE).
- Team will have a follow up meeting to discuss.
- Jeremy will keep the Team informed on Hypothes.is development.