Hypothesis, the leading provider of social reading tools and services, has reached a major new milestone: its 10 millionth annotation. The growth has been exponential, with five million annotations in the last year alone. At the same time, 27 new colleges, universities and schools have signed on to pilot social reading at scale. Our broad community has made these remarkable achievements possible: all the scientists, scholars, journalists, authors, publishers, fact-checkers, technologists and, now more than ever, teachers and students who have used and valued collaborative annotation over the years.

As we recognize this dramatic growth at Hypothesis, we know it is happening during an entirely new and very challenging time, for everyone — and in particular for educators and students. Almost overnight, nearly the entire educational landscape has moved to remote delivery.

The majority of our record 10 million annotations has been created by people reading together, moving us closer to a shared vision of transforming teaching and learning through social reading. Across all annotations the numbers are remarkable:

• More than 376,000 people have signed up to annotate with Hypothesis
• People have annotated almost a million unique documents
• Students and teachers have come together to annotate in nearly 2,500 classes
• Over 800 different institutions have integrated Hypothesis into their learning management system (LMS).

Visit the full post to see the video from Hypothesis founder and CEO Dan Whaley as he reflects on our journey to 10 million annotations.

The “new normal” we’re all living through has spotlighted collaborative annotation as a more relevant practice than ever for sharing knowledge and building critical-thinking skills. And an increasing number of institutions has turned to us for guidance: From community colleges to Ivy League universities, 27 new institutions have just signed on to formally pilot collaborative web annotation with Hypothesis as part of AnnotatED, the community for annotation in education. 

The diverse array of schools starting Hypothesis pilots speaks to the ways collaborative web annotation enhances teaching and learning across multiple disciplines, with different types of students and classes. Collaborative annotation is a powerful teaching tool that enables students to contribute to a conversation about readings directly on the texts themselves, and helps teachers see and guide how students are learning from and responding to their reading. Our new pilot schools include:

Ivy League universities: Cornell University, Princeton University

Community colleges: Glendale Community College, Montgomery College, North Arkansas College, Saddleback College, Solano Community College, South Puget Sound Community College 

Public colleges and universities: Appalachian State University, Boise State University, Colorado School of Mines, Columbia Basin College, Evergreen State College, Georgia Institute of Technology, Green River College, Michigan Technological University, University of Arizona, University of Kentucky 

Private colleges and universities: Carleton College, Colorado College, Creighton University, Denver Seminary, Franklin & Marshall College, Tulane University, University of St. Thomas, Wake Forest University 

Independent schools: Choate Rosemary Hall 

Piloting schools collaborate with us to integrate Hypothesis into their learning management system (LMS) via Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) — now with gradebook integration — and get virtual training, regular check-ins for pilot participants, on-demand support for teachers and staff, teacher and student surveys, and reporting on pilot usage and outcomes.

We are eager to partner with all 27 of our newly onboarding institutions. These schools will also join AnnotatED, the community of educators, researchers and technologists from organizations that engage deeply with collaborative annotation. To date, over 50 institutions have joined AnnotatED, and more are joining every week. Educators are seeing both qualitative and quantitative evidence that collaborative annotation is improving student learning. Read up on annotation strategies and hear from educators in our recent webinar.

As 2020 progresses and every day is another "Groundhog Day" of uncertainty, we expect to see even more schools piloting our program. To be of assistance during this challenging time, Hypothesis is waiving all fees to educational institutions for the remainder of 2020.