Introduction

NEW! As of Fall 2025, the Hypothesis External Tool in AsULearn has been updated. It now allows for annotation of many more resources, including VitalSource eTexts, and will recognize groupings from within your AsULearn course, making group annotations much easier.

Hypothesis now allows for collaborative annotation of various online resources:

Webpages/PDFs,
Files and pages in your online course
Google Drive assets
YouTube video transcripts
VitalSource eTexts that are associated with your course via adoption from our Campus Store

Using Hypothesis

Before you can use the Hypothesis LTI External tool, you must first enable it, which adds it to the Activity chooser in that course. See Enabling an External LTI Tool article for a step-by-step and video tutorial if needed.

1. Open the More menu in the Course Menu at the top of your course homepage.

2. Select "LTI External Tools" from the list.

3. Enable the toggle across from "Hypothesis" in the "Show in activity chooser" column.

Once you have added the Hypothesis External LTI Tool to your courses’s Activity chooser, head to Hypothesis’ tutorial for Creating Hypothesis-Enabled Readings in Moodle. This page covers all the details for adding annotation activities to the various resources listed above.

The new Hypothesis External LTI Tool allows small group annotation! In your course, you simply create and populate your Annotation Groups, and add those groups to a Grouping. Then you select the desired Grouping when you create the Hypothesis assignment. Head to Hypothesis’ tutorial for Using Moodle Groups to Create Hypothesis Reading Groups for complete step-by-step instructions and a video walk-though.

If you are curious about groups in general, see our support articles on Groups in AsULearn and Creating and Managing Groupings.

The new Hypothesis tool also allows for annotations of your online VitalSource eText. Once you have added the VItalSource Digital Materials External Tool to your course to provide your students with access to the eText, you can set up annotation assignments/activities using your eText.

Important!

VitalSource before Hypothesis! FIRST, students must click on the VitalSource link in your course, then click Read Now. That adds the text to their VitalSource Bookshelf. Only after that will they be able to annotate the text via Hypothesis. Remember, VitalSource BEFORE Hypothesis! When a student tells you they "can't annotate the textbook" - chances are they have never clicked the VitalSource link you added to the course.

Best practices to pass on to students when annotating VitalSource texts in Hypothesis

Make students aware that they’ll need to launch the text in VitalSource in order to claim their VitalSource license, and then they can launch the text in Hypothesis. They don’t need to do this every time, they just need to get the VitalSource license that’s assigned to them by going into VitalSource proper. So, click the VitalSource link first, then Read Now, BEFORE attempting to annotate with the Hypothesis tool.

Finding the URL to your VitalSource eText

To add a Hypothesis activity to annotate your course's online textbook, you'll need to find the book's URL in the VitalSource Bookshelf. Once you go and find it, save it for future use. Here are the steps:

Click on the link to the VitalSource tool in your course. If you named it 'My Materials' or something else, it will look similar to:
On the Campus Store page that appears, click on the Instructor Portal tab along the top:
On the next page, click on Launch Bookshelf:
On the VitalSource Bookshelf page, find your adopted text, open the 3-dot menu, and select Book Details:
On the Book Detail sidebar, click the Copy icon to copy the URL to your device's clipboard. This is the URL you will use to add a Hypothesis text annotation to your course.
Later, when you attempt to add a Hypothesis activity and you select VitalSource Book as the source to annotate, you'll paste in that URL:

Save it for later!