 So thanks all for hanging in for a second. I'm sure people will continue to trickle in, but I'll get started, because I don't wanna hold anyone up. Welcome, happy Friday, everyone. Thanks for coming. We are starting a new series here at Hypothesis called the First Friday Workshops to feature different topics. And our first session is going to be today's session, which is Annotate Your Syllabus. It is the second Friday of the month though. I do have to say I am aware that it is the second Friday. So in the future, First Friday Workshops, they will be the first Friday of the month. So I am going to put our slide deck into the chat. The URL to the slides are available to you here. So if you want any of the resources that I'm going to discuss today, you have them. And also please feel free to use the chat to ask questions throughout the session if you'd like. So today I am going to briefly talk about what Hypothesis is depending maybe on what everybody's experience with Hypothesis is. Talk about perhaps why you should annotate your syllabus. Maybe convince you of that, although perhaps you're already convinced if you're here. And then give some examples of assignment instructions and then provide resources for getting started in your LMS. So I do want to clarify that I'm not going to go over any technical demonstrations today, but I will point you to resources if you're not sure how to set up a hypothesis assignment with your syllabus in your class. So today is going to be more like, let's imagine pedagogically how we're going to annotate the syllabus with our students. So if we could get started by going to the chat, if everyone could share out and make sure please that you change the dropdown menu in the chat to everyone so that everyone can see your message. It would be awesome if you could share your name and then what school you're from and your discipline for what you teach. So we can kind of see what the range of folks we have here today. We have a few hypothesis success members on the call. So thanks for joining. And as you all are introducing yourselves, I will introduce myself. My name is Christina Carolus. I am a customer success manager here at Hypothesis. And some of my fellow customer success managers are also here. I am joining you all from Southern New Jersey. So I'm right outside of Philadelphia. And it's great to see people from all over here joining from lots of different places. So thanks all for joining today. And I actually do this assignment. I annotate the syllabus with my own students. I teach adjunct courses for Rutgers Camden. So I have annotated the syllabus with my students before. So thanks again all for sharing. I am going to ask you all to answer a poll if you could. Oh, I actually don't have this poll set up in my bad in this account. I wanted to ask if you could share what your experience in Hypothesis is in the chat. That would also be helpful. So have you used Hypothesis before? Have you never used it? Do you not know what it is? If you could let me know in the chat, just want to know how much demoing might be helpful for people. I'm sorry about that. I thought I had a quick poll to throw in for you all to answer. It looks like most people are familiar with Hypothesis. Awesome. So I'm going to just in case there's a quiet person out there because we're all instructors here for the most part. And we know sometimes our students don't always say when they don't know what something is. So I am going to just quickly bring up a Hypothesis-enabled reading. I'm going to show it in Canvas really quick just to show you what it is to make sure we're on the same page. But we do have integrations with all of the learning management systems. So just because I'm showing it in Canvas doesn't mean that like if you're using Blackboard or Brightspace or Moodle, that's fine. It should work for you as well. So I'm in Canvas. What I would do is I would open up a reading I'm using in my course. Again, this would be the same if you're using another learning management system. And my reading will load into a new window. And basically what I'm going to see in this window is my reading on the left-hand side with the annotation sidebar. This is what Hypothesis is adding to my courses on the right. So I have my students adding annotations to this document on the left and their thoughts are highlighted or what they're annotating rather is highlighted on the left and what they have actually said in the annotations is on the right. So you'll see here as I am hovering over Malika's annotation at the bottom you can see the highlight color of what she's annotated has changed. So the annotations very deeply connected and anchored to the text itself and the students end up having a conversation around the text. So you can see that I've replied to one of these students who are fake students in this instance but I have replied to one of the students here. So you can have a threaded discussion about the text directly on top of the text. So again, just to make sure that we're on the same page and we know kind of what hypothesis looks like before we get started. Awesome. Oh, Kevin, I just saw Kevin's note about being a computer science and engineering professor. I should have pulled up my computer science example. I just blew my physics example because it was right there. All right, so moving on to syllabus annotation. So I want to note that I already introduced myself. Our success team is always happy to help. If you do have questions, you're not sure about things throughout the session, please make sure that you reach out to our email. If you want to connect with one of us, we're always happy to help you get hypothesis set up in your course or brainstorm how exactly you might use it. So keep that in mind if I'm going through things and you're like, I don't really know how this might work for me. So I talked about what hypothesis is briefly. I do want to note that it is integrated pretty deeply in Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, Brightspace, Sakai. So all of your LMSs, what that means for you is if students simply open the reading that you've enabled hypothesis on in your learning management system, they'll automatically be signed in. So they don't have to do anything extra to log into their account or anything like that. They can just open the reading and get started with annotating. What is also great about the LMS integration is that you can grade within the LMS as well. And those grades will get sent to your grade book if you would like to grade the annotations, which of course some people choose to do and some people don't do that. Here are the hypothesis we like to say that hypothesis makes reading active, visible and social. It makes reading more active for students in that they are kind of forced with social annotation to engage in the text in a way that they wouldn't be if they were simply reading on their own. So they're reflecting on what they're reading and adding the comments to the text. It makes reading visible to you as the instructor because the students can narrate what they're thinking while they're reading, which we're not usually privy to, right? So we usually don't know what questions students might have when they're reading a text, what they might not understand. So we can see those in the annotations. And I've also heard from faculty that things are revealed based on what students aren't annotating. So that also may be a great thing to focus on and what becomes visible and using hypothesis. And finally, it makes reading social in that our whole class is collaborating on top of a document or maybe small groups if you're setting it up that way, but students can converse with each other around the text as they're reading. So reading is no longer an isolated activity, but something that is being discussed outside of class. And then you can bring that discussion back into your classroom. All right, so now that I have kind of sped through some intro stuff, we will get to the main topic of our presentation today. Why entity or syllabus? So I wanna see, I know that many of you have used hypothesis before and some of you maybe haven't started using it yet, but whether you are new to it or not, can you please let me know what you struggle with the most when it comes to your students and reading and why you might use hypothesis or be interested in using hypothesis. And then this can help us discuss why you might annotate the syllabus as well. Now we have lots of different disciplines here today. So also I'm just going back to the chat as you all answer my poll. Okay, now there are a few moments to respond. Now there's a lot of different answer choices to read. All right, so I'm going to end the poll. Hopefully I don't cut anybody off and share the results. And then a couple of people did put some info in the chat, ideas in the chat as well. Engage, help students learn and remember and engage with pre-class materials to assess the depth of their knowledge. So it looks like most people have chosen that they wanna get the students to discuss their reading actively. And I think that annotating your syllabus will be a great way to get that started from literally the first day of class. So while I think any of these issues could be assisted by starting with annotating your syllabus, it's really interesting to see that most of you are just hoping to get your students to discuss the reading more actively. All right, negotiating meanings in foreign language. Yes, that's a great discipline-specific one in the chat. So why annotate your syllabus? I think that it is important to keep in mind as we get started each semester that if we want students to engage actively throughout our courses, it's really important to lay the foundation for that shared space for them in the beginning of the class. So if we want them to engage actively in class, I don't necessarily wanna spend my first day of class just throwing content at them, just giving them content. That is not necessarily the active engagement I want to model throughout the term. So I like this quote from Dr. Angela Benson at the University of Alabama about making the syllabus as space for engaging in a shared vision for the course and a collaborative space instead of just this document that lays out all these policies. Yes, Judy, syllabordom. I like that. So I grabbed some of these tips from Dr. Remy Collier's Annotate Your Syllabus and Annotate Your Syllabus 4.0 blog posts. So he has written a lot about annotating the syllabus and in the slide deck, there are links, these are links to his blog posts if you want to read the full post. So I'm gonna put that in the chat yet again. The first thing I would consider doing if you're gonna have your students annotate your syllabus is to start with an annotated syllabus statement like literally in your syllabus. So even if they're annotating it asynchronously, it's a shared resource and you're kind of stating that it is a shared resource. So in creating the statement and there'll be an example of that on the next slide, you can emphasize that the syllabus is a collaborative space which might be a new idea for your students because they're kind of used to just being handed the syllabus and being told what the course is going to be about. And in this assignment, the syllabus can become a more interactive and social experience. And we wanna make that clear to them from the get-go. So here is a statement that Dr. Remy Collier has shared out. So I'm not gonna read all of that to you but I think that some of the points that he highlights here in the quote are important to make to your students as far as like what they might contribute to the syllabus. So asking, clarifying questions, sharing opinions about readings and assignments, noting things they're confused about or they're uncertain about and respond to policies and provide advice. Those are some things that you might want to let your students know they should be doing as they annotate the syllabus and also give the purpose of why you're annotating that together. So it's also important to emphasize that social reading is not going to be something that is a standalone thing in your course. So it sounds like most of you in the chat are either using hypothesis already or you're planning on using it in your courses. And this is a great way to kind of throw the students in head first. Like we are doing this, you should get used to it now. We're going to be talking over the readings as we move through the course together. So starting from day one, I think is important but also refreshing for students. My students always seem kind of like excited that the syllabus is something they get to engage with instead of something that they're just expected to consume. So you're kind of setting the expectation for a close reading from the beginning and that active engagement that will carry them through their academic lives. You even might want to ask the students and we'll talk about like seeding your syllabus with questions more in a couple of slides but you might even want to ask them what might be the benefits of doing something like this together rather than just reading alone throughout the course and start that conversation early because then you'll get more engagement with having the students engage with each other rather than just kind of throwing comments up there without the collaborative aspect. I also really like starting with annotating my syllabus because it gives the students an opportunity for becoming familiar with hypothesis in a low stakes way. So they get to be introduced to the tool before they've kind of gotten into the true content of the course. We can figure out if anyone's having issues with annotating or if there are any concerns about using the collaborative annotation tool early on and diagnose those before they're getting concerned about like, oh, I'm not getting my reading done for class. You can also prompt your students and focus commentary by, I mentioned this before like seeding your syllabus with annotations, questions going into your syllabus before the students have access to it and add your own annotations to it to point students to especially key areas of the syllabus, perhaps something where you want feedback or where you might wanna note like, okay, this is not necessarily something that's up for debate. This is just a policy that we're gonna have in the class. So you can highlight some of the course details with your own annotations and kind of guide students where you want more conversation to be happening as well. I think it's also important here to set the expectation that the students are going to be annotating, but not only that, you're gonna be reading their annotations, you're gonna be engaging with them as well. And that doesn't necessarily mean you have to reply to every annotation or even be in the annotations actively at all. I think it's just important for us as instructors to acknowledge in some way that we have read what the students have done. So they don't feel like it's kind of like this fruitless thing that they're doing. And they truly feel like it's like a collaborative experience you're taking their thoughts into consideration. So you could always look at the syllabus annotations together in class if they annotate the syllabus before class and engage in that way, send out your learning management systems announcements and address some of the concerns through that. Or you could give students private feedback in the grade book or just reply to the annotation. So there's a lot of different ways that this can look. It's just going to be helpful to, again, set the stage just for students that this is something that you're engaging back with them and the class becomes a more active space because of that. I think this also gives an opportunity to revisit the syllabus at a later stage. And this is something that we always want students to do. So students come to us, if it's the fall semester, maybe they're coming to us in late October and asking about an assignment. And we're like, did you go back to read the syllabus? Go back to the syllabus. So we always are kind of directing them back there. But as a class, do we go back to it? Do we kind of revisit it as a course? And annotating the syllabus in the beginning of the term, allows you to kind of take it and have a reflection point for later on. So I actually have in here some instructions. There's a link in the deck so you can access the link to the instructions where you have the students return to the syllabus and kind of summarize things that they've learned already. What objectives have they met? If they were noted concern about a topic, how did that actually turn out and make it a more reflective experience that they're returning back to? I did put a couple other syllabus annotation ideas in here for as far as like guiding students to annotate the syllabus goes. Something that is a visible thinking strategy, strategy is known as compass points. So you can ask students to use the compass points that are pictured here and the strategy, the full strategy is outlined in this link on the deck. But basically it gives students a framework for their comments or annotations. They could mark things as they need to know, things they're excited about, suggestions or worries. So these are common things that might come up when the students are reviewing the syllabus and could be helpful as a visible thinking strategy as they're moving through it. So another idea is to have students use tags in your syllabus as they're annotating so that you have a way to organize and discuss the different topics that might come up. So some different ways that you can add tags and I'm just going to demonstrate what that looks like very quickly. So you know what I'm talking about if you haven't used tags in hypothesis. But basically if I go back to my hypothesis assignment, you can see that this annotation here has a little label at the bottom that says question. So adding tags to annotations are basically like adding labels that can be used to organize and sort and find different annotations. So if I wanted to add a tag to another annotation, I could go in, oh, I think this is my only, so I'll reply, I'll reply to another student. Thanks for adding this video. I can add multiple tags by simply typing the word in to this bar, this tag bar and hitting enter and then click post and my tags are there. So tags again, like I said, give you a way to search annotations. So I can filter annotations by specific tags and that could make it easier for discussion in class. So as I was saying, you could have the students ask them to tag using your name if they have a question or just simply write the word question so you can find those easily to address. You could have them collaborate and agree as a class on what tags they're gonna be using for specific topics. So that's a great activity in the syllabus to go through like every, you know, if you have your weeks laid out in the syllabus and the topics laid out, have the students add tags to each topic, like what tags do you wanna use and then add tags like open question and have the students go back to those and search for and answer the open questions maybe in that return to the syllabus assignment that I had mentioned earlier. So there's an idea. Yeah, so there was a question in the chat, is it possible for instructors and students to change your tags on other people's annotations? No, you can only edit the tags on your own annotations. So as you may have noticed, I can only add tags to mine. There are other annotations and I can't add tags to the students annotations here. Oh, so yes, Brian asked how to find the annotations with the tags rather than using the control F function. So what you would do is you would go to the, there's like a little magnifying glass in the upper right-hand corner. So you can click on this magnifying glass and click on the search and type your tag search there. And the tags will come up. And also if anyone else has like used those terms in the annotation itself, it will come up. So hope that addresses your question, Brian. So getting started as we wind our few minutes down, just wanna make sure everyone has resources so they know how to set up a syllabus annotation assignment in their learning management system with hypothesis. We do have instructions that are pre-prepared if you want to use them for setting up your syllabus annotation assignment. So these are linked in the presentation itself. You can simply copy and paste them into your course and you can change them. Of course, you don't have to use exactly what our instructions are. We also have a version of this that is like kind of a more friend like a graphical document. So you can click on the resource here to download a infographic version of the instructions. If you wanna share that out in your course, you can use that basically the same thing as the text version, but has some graphics, perhaps a little bit easier to see the main points. We have here canvas assignment instructions for syllabus annotation. So if you use canvas and you have access to the canvas commons, you can actually import assignments from the canvas commons right into your course that already have the syllabus annotation instructions. So that is linked here with instructions for how to actually attach your syllabus to that. And then we also have resources for the non-canvas learning management systems. So Blackboard, Brightspace, Moodle, Sakai, if you want to use the syllabus annotation instructions that are linked here, you can simply copy and paste them into your LMS and revise or adapt as needed. And we also have instructions linked here for how to actually set up your assignment in your learning management system. If you're not sure how to do that, we have workshops coming up for the spring. So there are links to register for workshops on how to set up hypothesis-enabled readings in your learning management system. We also have other topics that are coming up on the spring so you can check those out. If you want to learn how before a subject is being offered in our partner workshops, again, please email us using the success and hypothesis email here. Reach out, we can make sure that you're connected to the right customer success manager and they can set up a time with you to walk you through setting up your syllabus annotation assignments. Yeah, so someone in the chat asked about having access to the presentation. The link, I just threw it into the chat again. So your slides are accessible here. I will also email it out with the recording. So you'll have access to it there. Using hypothesis throughout the term, I just want to wrap up with some ideas for doing that. As we have seated questions throughout the syllabus itself, you may want to also guide your students through the reading with questions. You can model annotations throughout the reading, ask questions and provide clarification as you use hypothesis in your other readings as well. Use student annotations to launch your class discussion. So I kind of mentioned before that you can have your students pre-annotate the syllabus or another reading and then bring that into class and bring those annotations up. Use the tags to filter if you want to and then call on students based on those annotations. So they have something to anchor their ideas to. It's not like they're just inventing this stuff as they're coming into class like feeling like they're being co-called. They have kind of put their thoughts down on paper and they can discuss in class and become more actively engaged that way. And then someone also asked in the chat a good question. Students can edit their annotations later and add tags. So I've actually had faculty tell me that they have students annotate without adding tags the first time through. And then later on, they'll have students go back and edit their annotations and add tags in the second pass as a kind of metacognitive activity. Like what were the themes in this reading? What were some questions that came up? Like kind of trying to organize thoughts. And then you can also get a final read on the student understanding of the text. Another idea for reading throughout the term is to ask the students to add an annotation at the very end of a text and ask for a final remaining question or a brief summary for the students to kind of make sure that they've made it through the reading and gotten the key points. We have more ideas for hypothesis starter assignments in the deck. So if you click on the link here, it'll bring you to a bunch of different pre-prepared instructions for you that are ready to use in your course. If you wanna see how other ways that you could be using hypothesis-enabled readings. And I do wanna highlight, as we finish up today, the resources that you have access to as partnership programs, schools. There are some resources linked here that you may have seen before, but I just wanna highlight things that might be helpful to share with your students. Our support team is always super happy to help if you ever have any questions with hypothesis. And then again, I cannot emphasize enough how much the customer success team really wants to work with you all. So please, please, please email us if you would like instructional design consultations we can help you get started or brainstorm new ways to use hypothesis in your class. I always really love to talk to faculty and hear how they're using it. It's always a delight. So I'd be happy to help you if you wanna figure out new and different ways to use it. So our email is here. Brian did ask, I do wanna address that question in the chat. Is there a way to restrict students from highlighting the same text? There is not a way to restrict students from highlighting the same text native to the tool. If that's something that you want to encourage students to converse around different pieces of the text, you might wanna just make that part of your assignment instructions to have students either reply to another student if you've already, you know, someone's already highlighted that piece of text or find a different piece of text to respond to and annotates. So I know we are a little bit over half past the hour now, but so I understand if anyone has to drop off the call, but does anyone have any questions or thoughts about annotating their syllabus? I do wanna have, I have time for questions if you all have them. Please feel free to put them in the chat or raise your hands and I can allow you to unmute. As I mentioned before, I have my students annotate my syllabus and we use a couple of different technologies in my class. So a lot of times they're reassuring each other about how, you know, like using this technology is easier, like we've done this before and this looks fun or something like that. And it's always interesting to see the questions that they have. Thanks everyone for attending. I hope you all have a great weekend.