3.3: Hypothes.is

Hypothes.is & IoST/Physical Computing

The introduction below was created for General Chemistry and you should go through it if you are not familiar with Hypothes.is.  In the value of Hypothes.is is not so much to to navigate the LibreTexts, but to navigate and develop a tag-taxonomy of open access documents across the web.  That is, you will come upon new devices you have never seen before and in order to effectively use them you need to figure out how they work and how to code them.  This will require you to go through multiple resources and by making annotations and tagging those annotations you can navigate back to the exact text in a resource that you need.  If you are taking the 7000 level option of this course you will also need to write up a final report and should combine the functionality of Hypothes.is with the Zotero citation management system, for which you should make a library for the report.

Physical Computing Class Note

In the tutorial below we use hypothes.is to annotate the LibreTexts and we post them to a class group that only the class can see. In this course I want you to make the annotations public and tag them with the following tag physical-computing. You should also make a second tag that places context, as we can then search the public annotations for the above tag, and see all the other tags and content associated with it. This contextual link will show you how it works.  Note, if you click the tag "physical-computing" within the hypothes.is interface it will provide a list of all pages with that term, and links to the annotations.  This is a very important tool that you will be required to use this semester.

Introduction

The Hypothes.is web annotation that is integrated into Libretexts allows you to highlight text, take notes in an collapsable overlay and organize your notes through tags. You can even include notes on pages that are not on LibreTexts. Your instructor may use this resource, but it is also available to you as an individual student to use as you see fit.  There are three levels of access your notes can have.

1. Public - anyone on the web can see it and you can go to the Hypothes.is website and search public annotations through their tags.
2. Group - if your instructor assigns a class group you should be provided with instructions that are germane to your class.  Annotations to your class group can only be seen by members of your class, and they may be integrated into your grade.  You can join more than one class group, and can even make your own groups (which would be useful for team projects). When you view annotations made by a group you must activiate that group in the hypothes.is overlay 
3. Private you have access to these annotations.

First you need to go to https://web.hypothes.is/ and create an account.  Please check your instructor if there are specific naming conventions.  If your class uses a closed discussion group your instructor will provide a link to that group. You can join more than one group, in fact you create your own groups and chooser who enters them.

The following YouTube from a Spring 2020 class gives a quick demonstration on the use of the Hypothes.is Web Annotation service. Your class may or may not use all of the features in this video, but it goes over one way of integrating Hypothes.is into your LibreText (most classes will not use the tag aggregator, and we will discuss tagging at the end of this tutorial).

 

Making Annotations

To make an annotation you simply highlight the text you want to annotate, choose "Annotate" and write in the overlay.   Note, the first time you open a page it will post to "Public" and you need to change that to your class group.  Once you have started posting to the class group that will be the default option, but initially the default is public.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): To annotate you simply highlight text and write in the overlay.  (Copyright; Belford, cc.0)

If you tag your annotation you can easily find it by going to your homepage in hypothes.is and then filtering by tags.  So you may want to make tags like "exam 1", or "nomenclature".  If you then filter with your hypothes.is user name and exam 1, you see those items you tagged.  If you just do exam 1, you filter for everything the class tagged exam 1.  You can then click the contextual link by the annotation, and hypothes.is will open that page, navigate to the highlighted text and display the annotation. (Note: In LibreText the highlights are hidden by default, and you need to click the "eye" with the slash over it (figure \(\PageIndex{2}\)

Using the Hypothes.is Overlay to read discussions

By default the hypothes.is overlay is closed and you do not see the annotations.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): By default the overlay is closed and annotations are hidden. This image shows how to pick a group and view group activity (Copyright; Belford CC0)

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\) shows how to pick a group and view group activity.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Annotation and highlights text being displayed. (Copyright; Belford CC0)

 

Using tags

Tags are a very powerful way of organizing your notes and Hypothes.is has different types of tags.  Your class group is a tag, and when you click on your hypothes.is group activity (figure \(\PageIndex{2}\)) you only see items posted to your class (note the first tag in the search filter of figure \(\PageIndex{4}\) is a group tag.  If you then click your name you see those you have posted to that group.  If you remove the group you see all the annotations you have posted anywhere.  If you generate a tag based on a topic or exam, you can then easily find that information.  Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\) shows a filter using two tags that resulting in four items in a student's "To Do list" for chapter 3 of a cheminformatics class

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Hypothes.is search filtered by the group tag 0UALR-OLCC (which was a class group) and a student's tag "Ch.3-ToDo". (Copyright; Belford CC0)

If the student clicks the contextual link hypothes.is will open the webpage that was highlighted, scroll down to the highlighted section and show the annotation in the overlay. This allows students to organize their notes on LibreText and quickly find content. If you get the chrome plugin you can even annotate material outside of LibreText and connect it to your material and notes within LibreText, as long as the material does not require a login to access.  It should also be noted that you can not highlight hidden text within LibreText (like the answers to exercises), and if you have a question on the answer to an exercise, you should highlight the question, not the answer.