Hypothesis experience

I was first introduced to Hypothes.is last semester during my internship. Here is a bit about my experience. I look forward to hearing about your experience or what you think about mine.

I have had three experiences with Hypothes.is.

First, I used it in a required, undergraduate health science course. The week I chose to use it was a week when I really needed the students to read two chapters from their text. I considered making a video or covering it during a synchronous session. However, everything was right there, worded well, etc.  And unfortunately, students generally avoided the reading.  I posted two of the chapters together as a single PDF in Hypothes.is. I divided the students into two groups so about 15 students worked together. This meant that I had to create two copies of the same PDF so that when I uploaded the document. I asked students to post once directly about the document. This could be something they found interesting, something they didn't understand or something that tied to a previous experience. For a secondary post, I asked them to respond to another post.  Since this was their first experience with the tool, I was leanient about what they posted.  Overall everyone participated and did well on the quiz questions from the material.  A few students did mention in their reflection that they didn't enjoy using Hypothesis. I am not sure if this is because we only used it once, this group of students aren't fond of reading, or if they just didn't like the tool features.

Second, I was working with a faculty member on a course redesign as part of my internship. The course was designed with several reading assignments but there was no direct activity or assessment of the reading, just a general reflection every couple weeks. We discussed what would make students feel motivated to complete the reading that she thought was so important.  She decided that she needed some specific activities to help students gather key points from the learning. So we developed regular Hypothesis assignments with a basic checklist type rubric to help guide student participation and collect comments about key points. 

Third, I was working with a faculty colleague at my home institution. She coordinates a large required course series with 20+ instructors. I assisted her in completing a course review which included course mapping, faculty focus groups, and student survey.  The student survey suggested that students weren't reading at all. Students didn't see the value.  The immediate project was to develop a remediation course for the summer.  Since the material would be a repeat, she was looking for new design ideas. Since students weren't reading, encouraging them to read key documents felt an appropriate approach along with some other changes.  I asked her how it worked. "Many of us used it. I really liked it. I used it to have them read a review article and they pointed out important facts. Or respond to prompts throughout a document. I also had them annotate lecture slides for things like muddy points. It worked well with this smaller group of students."

One of my questions is how to use it for larger classes such as over 100.  Hypothes.is suggested having a larger document with groups assigned to specific sections.  Do you think this would work or be too much? 

Does Hypothes.is encourage reading in a positive way? How have you used Hypothes.is or might you use it?