student annotation assignment in canvas

Expanded Student Annotation Assignment Options in Canvas

by Sarah McDaniel | Jun 21, 2021 | Canvas , Canvas Features/Functions , How-tos , Pedagogy

With an updated release of Canvas that launched in mid-May, instructors now have access to an additional Assignment format on Canvas: Student Annotation Assignments . With the addition of Student Annotation Assignments to the suite of resources supported through Canvas, instructors can now make use of two distinct platforms for student annotation assignments and activities, which can be tailored to distinct instructional contexts and learning objectives.

In this post, we will explore two frameworks for student annotation and close-reading exercises – individual annotations, completed independently by students, and social or group annotations, which students generate collectively – and consider which digital annotation tools best suit each purpose. Additionally, we will provide an overview of the new Student Annotation Assignment format and a recommended workflow for designing assignments that make use of it.

I. Student Annotation Assignments on Canvas

Features of canvas annotation assignments.

As a new Assignment format native to the Canvas learning management system, Student Annotation Assignments enable instructors to design assignments that ask students to annotate text- and image-based documents using a variety of annotation features also available to instructors in SpeedGrader. When working with an Annotation Assignment, students have access to a highlighting tool (to select text), a rectangular area selection tool (to select an area of the document), a pin marker (to mark a point of focus at a specific location in the document), a freehand drawing tool, a text box tool, and a strikethrough tool.

In addition, when making use of any of these text selection or modification tools, students can type out marginal comments that describe or reflect on their annotation choices.

Once students have completed their annotations, they click the maroon “Submit Assignment” button to save their work and deliver their annotated version of the document to the instructor through Canvas.

Students are also able to download their annotations – an annotated copy of the document – through the annotation toolbar.

Pedagogical Context for Canvas Annotation Assignments: Individual Work

As the Student View perspective shown above indicates, Canvas Annotation Assignments are designed for independent use by individual students . In brief, students open such assignments as they would any other on Canvas, begin an assignment attempt (by clicking “Start Assignment”), and access an unannotated copy of the original document uploaded by the instructor to begin their annotations. Each student, in other words, accesses a fresh copy of the document and creates and submits annotations that are visible only to the instructor.

As a result, Canvas Annotation Assignments are not effectively suited to group annotation work , for the simple reason that annotations are generated and submitted on an individual rather than a collaborative basis. However, individual annotation exercises – performed individually by students and submitted to the instructor for assessment – have a wide variety of instructional uses across the disciplines and can be used to help students prepare for group annotation work.

In the language-learning classroom, for example, individual annotation exercises represent one streamlined way to assess students’ reading comprehension skills (asking students to make translations, highlight particular parts of speech or grammatical structures, paraphrase passages, and raise comprehension or discussion questions responsive to the text) while challenging students to develop their fluency as readers, writers, and speakers through tasks that work through layers of cognitive complexity.

Across humanities and social sciences classrooms, individual annotation exercises can enable instructors to gain insight into and assess their students’ use of interpretive strategies and modalities through targeted reading exercises that challenge students to generate observations about a text or document, develop an argument or thesis about it, and gather evidence to support that thesis from their initial observations – an activity that could either precede the drafting of an argumentative essay or serve as a standalone exercise to develop the scaffolding for an argumentative essay.

In a variety of STEM contexts, individual annotation exercises can challenge students to represent their thinking and their work clearly in response to problems and questions – that is, to elucidate and emphasize the process of their problem-solving in addition to the solutions, products, and outcomes they ultimately generate.

Creating Canvas Annotation Assignments: Workflow for Instructors

For instructors, creating Canvas Annotation Assignments is just as straightforward as creating any other Canvas Assignment:

• We recommend uploading to your Canvas site the file you wish students to annotate before creating your Annotation Assignment. You may do so by navigating to the Files tab and uploading files there. This helps prevent occasional hiccups in correctly linking the Canvas Assignment with the file.

Grading Student Annotation Assignments

After students have attempted and submitted this assignment, you can view, assess, and provide feedback for student work using SpeedGrader. In opening each student’s submission, you will be able to view all annotations, mark-up, and comments the student generated.

II. Hypothes.is Integration on Canvas

A second format for student annotation activities and assignments on Canvas is the social annotation platform Hypothes.is, available for instructor use through the Canvas – Hypothes.is integration. As a platform designed specifically to support the work of social annotation, Hypothes.is is ideally suited to collaborative, group-based exercises in reading and annotation.

Unlike with Canvas Annotation Assignments, Hypothes.is activities and assignments are visible by default to all members of a Canvas site; as students contribute annotations, these become visible to their colleagues, who are then able to respond to and comment on the observations and ideas that have been shared. Instructors at UChicago have found that Hypothes.is activities are a good way to promote students’ engagement with each other, to encourage discussions of close reading, and to make the reading process more transparent.

To access Hypothes.is activities in Canvas, students click on the name of the activity (under Modules or Assignments) and load a new tab that displays the document undergoing annotation. The Canvas – Hypothes.is integration makes use of a collapsible annotation applet that loads on the right-hand side of this tab.

An additional important difference between Canvas Annotation Assignments and Hypothes.is lies in the way that annotations are saved and the document formats that are supported. Canvas Annotation Assignments make use of an image-based overlay process, incorporating student highlights, comments, and other modifications onto approximated locations in the document. Hypothes.is, on the other hand, makes use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to tie annotations and highlights – the two annotation strategies available to students – to particular characters or strings of characters in the document. Accordingly, Canvas Annotation Assignments are compatible with a variety of file formats (.pdf, .docx, .png, .jpeg) and enable students to produce annotations on non-textual features of a document (such as images, diagrams, and interstitial space), while Hypothes.is can be used to annotate web pages and PDFs for annotation and does not support the annotation of non-textual features of a document. Annotations produced through Canvas Annotation Assignments can thus at times be less precise (not tied to specific characters) than those generated in Hypothes.is (which are highly portable across browsers and devices because they are tied to specific characters), while Canvas Annotation Assignments allow for the annotation of additional non-textual features.

Instructors at UChicago have found creative ways to respond to the affordances and limitations of each platform; for an in-depth exploration of faculty use of Hypothes.is and social annotation at UChicago, please see “ Social Annotation and the Pedagogy of Hypothes.is ” on the Academic Technology Solutions blog. For a comprehensive treatment of the technical specifications and steps required to implement Hypothes.is in Canvas, as well as effective practices for its use, please see “ Use the Hypothesis-Canvas Integration ” on the UChicago IT Knowledge Base.

If you have any questions about Canvas Annotation Assignments, Hypothes.is, digital annotation, or other topics in Canvas, Academic Technology Solutions can help. Set up a consultation with us , or drop by our Virtual Office Hours .

• How do I annotate a file as an assignment submission in Canvas? (Canvas student guide)
• Student Annotation Submissions (Canvas instructor video)
• Use the Hypothesis-Canvas Integration
• Social Annotation and the Pedagogy of Hypothes.is

(Featured photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash )

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Canvas - How can students annotate an assignment in Canvas?

Assignment Annotation set-up   |   Canvas App Annotation Only   |   Resources   |   Tips & Tricks

Assignment Annotation  

Start by creating an assignment . .

• Add a title , description  (there is no need to link the document as you'll add that later), and point value .  
• Once you get to the Submission Type, select Online Submission .

• After you select Student Annotation you will attach the file . You will have an option to attach from the Course Files, your personal files (My Files) or upload a document. 
• Finish setting up the assignment with the submission attempts , optional: plagiarism review, optional: peer review and availability/due dates. (Group assignments do not currently support student annotation assignments).

Instructor set-up for Canvas App Annotation only

Student view (images examples from Android device)

• After you log into the Canvas Student App, locate the course and the assignment to annotate. 

• Select the link and it will open the mark up view. 

• Canvas guide: How do I create and online assignment?
• Canvas guide:  How do I submit a PDF assignment with annotations in the Student app on my Android device?
• Canvas guide:  How do I submit a PDF assignment with annotations in the Student app on my iOS device? 

Tips & Tricks

• Make sure to verify your assignment has been submitted. 
• The Android and iOS steps to submit are very different, make sure you are using the right documentation for your device. 
• You can also save the annotation on your device and submit it through the submit assignment button ( Android guide ; iOS guide ). 
• For more Canvas Student app guides, check out the full list of Android guides and iOS guides.  

24/7/365 Canvas Support is available through the help icon in Canvas, by calling the phone support for  faculty, staff and students .

University Center for Teaching and Learning

Canvas update: student annotation submissions.

• May. 10, 2021
• Teaching Center Staff
• Canvas , Featured , News
• Introduction

Overview/How to Use

Limitations

Student directions, assignment ideas, new assignment type: student annotation submissions.

Canvas is getting a significant new feature with the May 2021 Feature Update (“Canvas Release”), going live on May 15. The new feature, called Student Annotation Submissions, is an entirely new online submission type for assignments. This new assignment allows the teacher to upload a file to Canvas that the student can then, without leaving Canvas, mark up using the built-in annotation tools (highlight, make comments, draw marks, etc.) as their submission.

As part of the roll-out of this new feature, we will be hosting two twenty-minute mini-webinars introducing and discussing the feature. The webinars are scheduled Friday, May 21 at 11 a.m. and Tuesday, May 25 at 1 p.m. Click on either date to be taken to the registration page. We will also record the webinar and post it for anyone to watch at a later date.

See the end of this page for some ideas for how you might use this feature. If you would like, you can go to the Canvas release notes page to see the details from the vendor.

• Create an assignment as usually would.
• For the assignment type, choose Online.
• Under online entry options, check student annotation.
• Choose an existing file (such as a PDF, Word document, or JPG), or upload a new one, that will be the template for the annotation assignment.
• Finish completing your assignment with the normal process.

Official step-by-step documentation from Instructure is not yet available.

• Annotation assignments use the same annotation tools available to teachers with SpeedGrader. While a variety of file types are supported, PDF or Word files will have the best compatibility. Here is a list of file types the DocViewer can preview.
• These assignments are not currently available for use with with peer assessment, but this is planned for the future.
• This type of assignment cannot be made a group assignment. (For these, consider using a full collaboration tool, like Office 365.)
• This is not a multi-user live collaborative document (like Office 365, Google Documents, etc.).
• Keep in mind that most students do not have a stylus for detail drawing, and drawing with a mouse is imprecise at best.
• All annotations exist as a layer in Canvas displayed over top the original; it is not actually editing the original document. You can export the annotations to a PDF file, where the annotations will exist on the PDF comment layer.

Official step-by-step documentation from Instructure is not yet available. However, since the assignment uses the same tools available to a teacher using SpeedGrader, you can share those directions with students until official documentation is ready.

Here are some ideas to get you thinking about how you might use this new tool in your course. Do note that many of these are possible to do in other ways (like using Office 365 collaboration documents). The tool in Canvas can make some of these quicker or easier, but, in some cases, it may be appropriate to continue to use the other tools. Feel free to contact the Educational Software Consulting team for help using the feature, or ask for a consultation with Teaching Support staff to discuss how these activities might help your students reach their learning objectives in your course.

• Have students analyze, critique, or respond to prompts (texts, images, or both).
• Train academic paper reading skills. Reading academic papers can be challenging to read and learn from without training. Upload a paper (either relevant to this course, or perhaps in a similar field, but not exactly related to this course) and ask the students to read it. Have them use the annotation tools to highlight passages they consider important, make margin notes for questions that remain or their thoughts at that moment of reading, or to make commentary about the structure, flow, and formatting of the paper.
• You can provide feedback on important information the student did not take notes on, extraneous highlighting, and other details.
• Ask for self-reflection and/or start a class discussion of errors in papers. Use a sample assignment submission like students might hand in and ask them to mark it up. Optionally, you can include a rubric in the template document for the students to fill in. This will allow you to have a discussion with them about the feedback that they find most important. This can also help them to review their own submissions before submitting.
• Post a “find errors and correct them” assignment. Especially useful for a language or coding course (but also can apply to others, like math or logic), create an assignment of statements or solutions that have errors in them, and ask students to mark up what the error is, and suggest corrections. Do keep in mind the limitations of annotations as small corrections; do not have problems that require a significant rework. “True or False, but, if false, make it true” assignments are a narrower sub-type of this activity.
• Ask students to label a diagram or image as their submission. The student can use point comment tools to label individual parts, or box comments for larger structures that cover an area. This is comparable to a “hot spot” question in some ways. This is only recommended for identifying parts of a diagram, image or document; other assignment types are better for rote whole image identification. This can be used not only for low-level identification (“label the parts of this building’s façade and attribute it to a period”), but also higher-level analysis (“discuss your interpretation of this x-ray”).
• Collect student feedback in a specific format, such as providing a form or template that you would like students to fill in for a “360 degree” peer evaluation after a group assignment, but you do not want students to need to download or upload files (and a survey is too much for what is needed).
• Fill out “lab notebook” or “observation notebook” documents in a course that does not make heavy use of them to utilize another tool specialized to that purpose.

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• How do I create a Student Annotation assignment?

Canvas allows instructors to post a document annotation assignment, which presents students with a document and requires them to annotate it with text, highlighting, free drawing, and comments. The student annotation tools are the same tools instructors have available to them in the SpeedGrader.

The document to be annotated can be of any of the following file types:

.doc .docx .pdf .ppt .pptx .xls .xlsx .rtf .txt .jpg .jpeg .png

Students can only annotate the document. They cannot edit the document. Students cannot delete text, insert images or links, edit PowerPoint slides, or edit Excel data.

Student annotation assignments cannot be set up as Group Assignments, but they can be peer reviewed.

Upload the document you want students to annotate to your Files tool

If your Files tool is not hidden from students,  set the files "publish" setting to "Only available to students with a link." This ensures that students will only be able to access the file via the assignment.

Go to Assignments

Click Add (+) Assignment

Enter the assignment details

Under Submission Type, select "Student Annotations"

Click Course Files

This displays all the folders and files in your Files tool

Select the file you want the students to annotate in this assignment

Complete the Assign section of the Assignment

Click Save or Save & Publish

When a student clicks on the Student Annotation assignment, they will be able to read the directions and click on a "Start Assignment" button.

After clicking on the Start Assignment button, students are presented with the file in a Canvas document viewer with all of the annotation tools available to them.

Instructors can view and grade the student annotated document in the SpeedGrader.

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Student annotation options

There are three primary tools available within Canvas to allow students to annotate. To learn more about the differences between the three options, please refer to our detailed comparison matrix or our simplified high-level matrix . 

1. Canvas Student Annotation Assignments

Instructor Guide to Setting Up an Online Assignment

Student Guide to Annotating

Allows instructors to upload a file to allow students to annotate directly in canvas. Annotations made by students are visible only to the teaching team members. Other students in the class cannot see each other's annotations unless peer reviews are enabled.

2. Hypothes.is

Instructor Guide to add Hypothesis to Modules

Instructor Guide to add a Hypothesis Assignment

Hypothesis allows students in a course to collaborate by adding annotations and notes to a PDF file simultaneously. Hypothesis files and assignments can be assigned to the entire class or to specific groups. Annotations cannot be made private between just the student and instructor.

3. Harmonize 

Creating Image, Video, and PDF Annotations

PDF Annotations

Harmonize enables students to annotate images, videos, and PD files. Harmonize annotation assignments can be assigned to the entire course, specific sections or groups, or privately between the teaching team and students.

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New Feature: Student Annotation assignments

Student annotation assignments.

This feature allows instructors to provide a file in the assignment workflow for students to annotate. Currently students must take additional steps or use third-party tools to annotate files.

How to set up a Student Annotation assignment

• Create/edit an assignment. Set Online as the Submission Type .
• Check the box for Student Annotation then choose a file from the Available folders or Upload a new file.

How do students annotate a file?

Student annotation assignment limitations.

• Cannot be assigned to groups.
• Not supported on mobile devices. Use the File Uploads Submission Type and provide the file in the assignment description for students to download and annotate on a mobile device.
• DocViewer, the tool used for annotating, is currently not accessible for students using assistive technologies.

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Expanded Student Annotation Assignments in Canvas

by Sarah McDaniel | Jun 21, 2021 | Instructional design , Services

With an updated release of Canvas that launched in mid-May, instructors now have access to an additional Assignment format on Canvas: Student Annotation Assignments . With the addition of Student Annotation Assignments to the suite of resources supported through Canvas, instructors can now make use of two distinct platforms for student annotation assignments and activities, which can be tailored to distinct instructional contexts and learning objectives.

In this post, we will explore two frameworks for student annotation and close-reading exercises – individual annotations, completed independently by students, and social or group annotations, which students generate collectively – and consider which digital annotation tools best suit each purpose. Additionally, we will provide an overview of the new Student Annotation Assignment format and a recommended workflow for designing assignments that make use of it.

I. Student Annotation Assignments on Canvas

Features of canvas annotation assignments.

As a new Assignment format native to the Canvas learning management system, Student Annotation Assignments enable instructors to design assignments that ask students to annotate text- and image-based documents using a variety of annotation features also available to instructors in SpeedGrader. When working with an Annotation Assignment, students have access to a highlighting tool (to select text), a rectangular area selection tool (to select an area of the document), a pin marker (to mark a point of focus at a specific location in the document), a freehand drawing tool, a text box tool, and a strikethrough tool.

In addition, when making use of any of these text selection or modification tools, students can type out marginal comments that describe or reflect on their annotation choices.

Once students have completed their annotations, they click the maroon “Submit Assignment” button to save their work and deliver their annotated version of the document to the instructor through Canvas.

Students are also able to download their annotations – an annotated copy of the document – through the annotation toolbar.

Pedagogical Context for Canvas Annotation Assignments: Individual Work

As the Student View perspective shown above indicates, Canvas Annotation Assignments are designed for independent use by individual students . In brief, students open such assignments as they would any other on Canvas, begin an assignment attempt (by clicking “Start Assignment”), and access an unannotated copy of the original document uploaded by the instructor to begin their annotations. Each student, in other words, accesses a fresh copy of the document and creates and submits annotations that are visible only to the instructor.

As a result, Canvas Annotation Assignments are not effectively suited to group annotation work , for the simple reason that annotations are generated and submitted on an individual rather than a collaborative basis. However, individual annotation exercises – performed individually by students and submitted to the instructor for assessment – have a wide variety of instructional uses across the disciplines and can be used to help students prepare for group annotation work.

In the language-learning classroom, for example, individual annotation exercises represent one streamlined way to assess students’ reading comprehension skills (asking students to make translations, highlight particular parts of speech or grammatical structures, paraphrase passages, and raise comprehension or discussion questions responsive to the text) while challenging students to develop their fluency as readers, writers, and speakers through tasks that work through layers of cognitive complexity.

Across humanities and social sciences classrooms, individual annotation exercises can enable instructors to gain insight into and assess their students’ use of interpretive strategies and modalities through targeted reading exercises that challenge students to generate observations about a text or document, develop an argument or thesis about it, and gather evidence to support that thesis from their initial observations – an activity that could either precede the drafting of an argumentative essay or serve as a standalone exercise to develop the scaffolding for an argumentative essay.

In a variety of STEM contexts, individual annotation exercises can challenge students to represent their thinking and their work clearly in response to problems and questions – that is, to elucidate and emphasize the process of their problem-solving in addition to the solutions, products, and outcomes they ultimately generate.

Creating Canvas Annotation Assignments: Workflow for Instructors

For instructors, creating Canvas Annotation Assignments is just as straightforward as creating any other Canvas Assignment:

• We recommend uploading to your Canvas site the file you wish students to annotate before creating your Annotation Assignment. You may do so by navigating to the Files tab and uploading files there. This helps prevent occasional hiccups in correctly linking the Canvas Assignment with the file.

Grading Student Annotation Assignments

After students have attempted and submitted this assignment, you can view, assess, and provide feedback for student work using SpeedGrader. In opening each student’s submission, you will be able to view all annotations, mark-up, and comments the student generated.

II. Hypothes.is Integration on Canvas

A second format for student annotation activities and assignments on Canvas is the social annotation platform Hypothes.is, available for instructor use through the Canvas – Hypothes.is integration. As a platform designed specifically to support the work of social annotation, Hypothes.is is ideally suited to collaborative, group-based exercises in reading and annotation.

Unlike with Canvas Annotation Assignments, Hypothes.is activities and assignments are visible by default to all members of a Canvas site; as students contribute annotations, these become visible to their colleagues, who are then able to respond to and comment on the observations and ideas that have been shared. Instructors at UChicago have found that Hypothes.is activities are a good way to promote students’ engagement with each other, to encourage discussions of close reading, and to make the reading process more transparent.

To access Hypothes.is activities in Canvas, students click on the name of the activity (under Modules or Assignments) and load a new tab that displays the document undergoing annotation. The Canvas – Hypothes.is integration makes use of a collapsible annotation applet that loads on the right-hand side of this tab.

An additional important difference between Canvas Annotation Assignments and Hypothes.is lies in the way that annotations are saved and the document formats that are supported. Canvas Annotation Assignments make use of an image-based overlay process, incorporating student highlights, comments, and other modifications onto approximated locations in the document. Hypothes.is, on the other hand, makes use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to tie annotations and highlights – the two annotation strategies available to students – to particular characters or strings of characters in the document. Accordingly, Canvas Annotation Assignments are compatible with a variety of file formats (.pdf, .docx, .png, .jpeg) and enable students to produce annotations on non-textual features of a document (such as images, diagrams, and interstitial space), while Hypothes.is can be used to annotate web pages and PDFs for annotation and does not support the annotation of non-textual features of a document. Annotations produced through Canvas Annotation Assignments can thus at times be less precise (not tied to specific characters) than those generated in Hypothes.is (which are highly portable across browsers and devices because they are tied to specific characters), while Canvas Annotation Assignments allow for the annotation of additional non-textual features.

Instructors at UChicago have found creative ways to respond to the affordances and limitations of each platform; for an in-depth exploration of faculty use of Hypothes.is and social annotation at UChicago, please see “ Social Annotation and the Pedagogy of Hypothes.is ” on the Academic Technology Solutions blog. For a comprehensive treatment of the technical specifications and steps required to implement Hypothes.is in Canvas, as well as effective practices for its use, please see “ Use the Hypothesis-Canvas Integration ” on the UChicago IT Knowledge Base.

If you have any questions about Canvas Annotation Assignments, Hypothes.is, digital annotation, or other topics in Canvas, Academic Technology Solutions can help. Set up a consultation with us , or drop by our Virtual Office Hours .

• How do I annotate a file as an assignment submission in Canvas? (Canvas student guide)
• Student Annotation Submissions (Canvas instructor video)
• Use the Hypothesis-Canvas Integration
• Social Annotation and the Pedagogy of Hypothes.is

(Featured photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash )

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New Canvas Assignment Type: Student Annotation

Posted in News

On the assignment creation page , instructors can select the option to create an online assignment and select the Student Annotation assignment type.

Instructors provide the file that should be annotated, and students use the annotation tools to complete the assignment. Completed annotation submissions are viewed in SpeedGrader with the student’s annotations shown for grading. 

• Student annotation assignments cannot be used for group assignments.
• Although annotations are supported in the Canvas Student app, this specific assignment type is not currently supported for mobile devices. If instructors want students to be able to annotate a document via the mobile app, they should also use the File Uploads submission type and provide the original file in the assignment description for students to download and annotate in the app.
• Peer reviews are supported for student annotation submissions. However, Anonymous Peer Reviews are not supported for student annotation assignments, as the names of students are not displayed anonymously in annotations.
• See the full Canvas Release Notes (2021-05-15) for more details.
• Learn about other recent Canvas changes and updates at Georgetown.

Higher Ed and Technology: Academics at Chapman

Student Annotation in Canvas Hypothes.is vs Canvas Student Annotation Submissions

October 14, 2021

Hypothes.is

• Instructors can make PDFs and web pages hosted in Canvas annotatable.
• Students can then annotate course readings collaboratively, sharing comments, and replying to each other’s comments.
• Instructors can also create annotation assignments using Hypothesis so that students submit their annotation “sets” for feedback and grading in Canvas.
• Hypothesis allows instructors to create small reading groups using Canvas’ built-in Groups. Instructors need to make sure they have built and configured the Canvas Group Sets and Canvas Groups before creating a new Hypothesis reading.
• Detailed instructions for Hypothes.is

Canvas Student Annotation Submissions

• Instructors upload a file (PDF or Word files will have the best compatibility) for a student to annotate as an assignment submission. Students annotate the file and submit it from within Canvas.
• Student annotation assignments cannot be used for group assignments.
• Although annotations are supported in the Canvas Student app, this specific assignment type is not currently supported for mobile devices. If instructors want students to be able to annotate a document via the mobile app, they should also use the File Uploads submission type and provide the original file in the assignment description for students to download and annotate in the app.
• Peer reviews are supported for student annotation submissions. However, Anonymous Peer Reviews are not supported for student annotation assignments, as the names of students are not displayed anonymously in annotations.
• Detailed instructions for Canvas Student Annotation Submissions .

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Hypothesis: Collaborative Annotation for Canvas LMS

Available for.

Available for : Instructors Students

Log in to Canvas to access Hypothesis

ABOUT HYPOTHESIS

Hypothesis is a collaborative annotation tool integrated with Canvas that supports shared annotations within a course, discussion in response to annotations, and active reading of text. Instructors select Hypothesis as an external tool when setting up an assignment and can also choose to assign readings to groups. Students can then annotate course readings collaboratively, sharing comments, and replying to each other’s comments with text, links, images, and video. Hypothesis is also fully integrated with SpeedGrader for efficient review and grading of student annotations.

Resources for instructors

• We recommend selecting the Load In A New Tab option when setting up a Hypothesis assignment. This will allow for a better reading experience for students, especially those who magnify the contents of their screen for accessibility purposes.
• Set up Hypothesis readings through Canvas Modules
• Grade Hypothesis annotations in Canvas
• If you are using Canvas Files or Groups for any Hypothesis readings you will need to take additional steps before the assignment works in the new course.
• Hypothesis FAQs

Resources for students 

Consider sharing the following links in your Canvas course, or point students to this page

• Learn the basics of navigating and using Hypothesis
• Short screen casts show how to highlight, annotate, make page notes, and reply to others’ notes
• Jazz up your annotations with this deep dive into the editing interface
• Create stand-out annotations with these five best practices to make your annotations stand out

Hypothesis helps you to

• Provide a new way for students to discuss class readings
• Help students consider multiple viewpoints when reading
• Assist students in close and active reading of texts
• Encourage students to engage critically with readings

Hypothesis Support

Workshops & webinars, hypothesis 101.

If you’d like to learn more about Hypothesis and see a demo, register for an upcoming Hypothesis 101 webinar or watch a Hypothesis 101 recording .

Hypothesis Partner Workshops

Each quarter, Hypothesis offers a variety of (typically) 30min workshops led by their team . Are you looking for ways to help your students develop their close reading skills and increase their engagement with your course materials? Maybe you’re seeking a more collaborative approach to reading complex texts while building community? Get ideas you can bring back to your courses, students, and colleagues for how to use Hypothesis for social annotation.

Topics for this quarter:

• Activating annotation in Canvas
• Using multimedia & tags in annotations
• Using Hypothesis with small groups
• Creative ways to use social annotation in your course
• Show-and-tell participatory workshop

Liquid Margins

Hypothesis hosts a recurring web “show” featuring instructors and staff to talk about collaborative annotation, social learning, and other ways to make knowledge together.

Offered throughout the year

Previous workshop recordings

If you missed any of the Hypothesis partner workshops offered during autumn quarter, you can find recordings on the Hypothesis YouTube channel .

Vendor Help

• The Hypothesis Knowledge Base includes FAQs, tutorials, how-tos, and troubleshooting tips.
• Schedule a meeting with Hypothesis Customer Success Specialist Autumn Ottenad for instructional design advice or questions on how to best use Hypothesis in your course.
• Watch Liquid Margins , the Hypothesis web series, to learn more about how other instructors use collaborative annotations in their course.
• Email and phone

Student Collaboration with Canvas Groups

Collaboration is an important part of the learning process. Positive group experiences have been shown to increase student engagement, retention, and overall academic success (Palloff & Pratt, 2005). By working together with their peers, students can exercise a host of foundational skills that can be applied to the real world and reinforce skills relevant to their coursework (Flaherty, 2022). In a collaborative learning environment, knowledge is exchanged among students as they search for information, discuss, and share options.

Although working in groups is beneficial, it can be difficult to keep track of everything happening within the team.  Having a shared space to communicate, collect resources, share knowledge and opinions, and work together to produce a final product or presentation is key.   Canvas Groups  offers a great solution for this.

Canvas Groups are collaborative work spaces, essentially a mini-site within your Canvas course, where students can work together on projects and assignments. Students can be placed into groups manually or randomly distribute students across any number of groups. Each Canvas Group will have full access to many of the same tools found in Canvas course sites, including Announcements, Collaborations, Discussions, Files, and Pages.

Setting Up Canvas Group Workspaces 

Canvas Groups provides a variety of options for setting up your student groups, allowing you to choose what works best for your course, students, and particular assignment.  The first option is to  manually create groups  and assign students to them yourself.  This works great if you have a smaller class size and/or would like to be strategic in creating groups.  The second option is to have  Canvas automatically create groups  and distribute students evenly among those groups.  Finally, the third option is to create a specific number of groups and then allow students to  self select their groups .  Canvas Groups also allows you to  set a group leader for each group .  Having roles within a group provides structure and distributes responsibility among group members.  This helps to ensure all students are taking an active role within the team. 

Group Communication

Communication is very often a trouble spot for groups.  Students commonly complain they struggle to communicate with one another when working on group projects.  Canvas Groups provides a simple, streamlined way for students to communicate with members of their group.  Within their Canvas Group workspace, students can send out Announcements to the entire group and create discussion boards. They can also message individual members of the group, if needed.  Instructors can also send messages to specific groups and check-in on each group’s progress by accessing the group’s workspace.  In addition, students can also create Pages, share Files, and create collaborative Google documents through Collaborations, making it easier for them to collaborate on tasks.

Creating Group Assignments and Discussions

You can create both Canvas Assignments and Discussions using the groups you create in your course. If you  create a group Canvas Assignment , students can work together on the assignment and then submit it as a group. Only one student has to submit the assignment on behalf of the group. When  grading a group assignment , you can assign a grade and provide feedback comments to the entire group in Speedgrader. You also have the option to assign grades to each student individually. With this option, you can enter a grade for each individual member of the group, and you can choose to send feedback comments to the individual student or the whole group. This is a good option if you plan to adjust students’ grades to reflect their individual contributions to the assignment. For example, you can create a peer evaluation for students to provide feedback on their group members’ contributions and use this feedback when grading. 

You can also set up group discussions in Canvas. When you  create a group Canvas Discussion,  Canvas will create a copy of the discussion board prompt so that students interact with their smaller groups instead of the entire class. This is a great feature if you have a larger class since discussions with a lot of students can become overwhelming, which leads to students all replying to the same one or two posts. Creating smaller group discussions can be less overwhelming for students as they have fewer posts to read and respond to. Students will only be able to see their group’s discussion, so it can be helpful to send out an announcement to the class after the due date to share common themes or interesting points you noticed across all discussion groups. 

Canvas Groups makes it simple to create opportunities for collaboration that will foster student engagement with your course material. If you are interested in exploring Canvas Groups further,  request a consultation with the LSA Learning and Teaching Consultants .  

References:

Flaherty, H. B. (2022). Using collaborative group learning principles to foster community in online classrooms. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 42(1), 31-44. https://doi.org/10.1080/08841233.2021.2013390

Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2005). Collaborating online: Learning together in community. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Carmencanvas update - assign individual modules, assignments, and pages to specific students and sections.

Starting this weekend, instructors will be able to assign modules, pages, and ungraded discussions to specific sections and students.  This new functionality brings with it a redesign to the Assign to feature and where it can be found throughout your course.

The Assign to option in assignments, quizzes, pages, modules and discussions will now be found in a new flyout menu that can be accessed from multiple places associated with each course element.

Look in the vertical-dot menu along with other settings for modules, near the edit button on the main page for quizzes and assignments, and as a link at the bottom of these pages when in edit mode.

• Teaching and Learning Resource Center: CarmenCanvas

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Use the following links to log in:

For registered NAU students, faculty and staff with an @nau.edu email address.

For non-NAU affiliated learners. Log in to access courses as a Guest.

For those without an @nau.edu email address.

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Welcome to Turnitin’s new website for guidance!

In 2024, we migrated our comprehensive library of guidance from https://help.turnitin.com to this site, guides.turnitin.com. During this process we have taken the opportunity to take a holistic look at our content and how we structure our guides.

This page is here to help you orientate yourself with these changes and update your resources

What's new?

We have restructured the content to help you navigate it more efficiently.

We are consolidating numerous pages to make our individual guides more valuable as well as removing duplicated content.

For example, our Similarity Report guidance on help.turnitin is repeated in numerous places to cater for each individual integration and license type. On guides.turnitin this content will exist in a single place to allow for users of all integrations and licenses to find it easily. We have made slight modifications to these guides to help you understand which guides are pertinent to you and your institution.

Our guidance search has greatly improved

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Dedicated student and administrator guidance hubs

Visit the Student hub area to locate student guidance. For students who access Turnitin via an LMS or VLE, check out the subsection Submitting to Turnitin .

Visiting the Administrator hub area to locate administrator guidance and release notes. 

iThenticate and Crossref Similarity Check guidance is now located on a separate site

To improve the experience for our iThenticate and Crossref Similiarity Check customers we have move their help content onto a separate help site, guides.ithenticate.com . This will improve the search for all users.

We have also created an orientation page for this site to help users become acclimatised.

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Some guidance which was previously provided under each LMS has been moved to sections that reflect those workflows’ outcomes. Use the table below as a cheatsheet to quickly locate guidance.

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I teach in the Computer and Information Technology department at Miami University (the one in Ohio, not Florida). In addition to teaching about technology, I like to explore how technology can automate things so that I have more time to focus on helping my students.

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