Gathering face-to-face and virtually at professional events is a powerful way to develop understanding and make connections. But so often, the benefits of these events are limited to the moment: we experience the keynoters and presenters, we converse at our table and in the hallway, we might take notes and take ideas back home, but we usually don’t have the opportunity to activate common scholarly practices together with all our fellow attendees and others who might not be there at the same place and time.

Hypothesis is joining with the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) to experiment with a new way to experience a scholarly conference. As a part of the Research Summit at OLC Innovate 2020, face-to-face and virtual attendees will have the opportunity to focus together on documents aligned with presentations and topics at the summit, using social annotation to conduct and record their discussion. We’ll be using these annotated conference proceedings to help shape activities at the summit, and they’ll also live on as a scholarly record of conference discussion that remain open for others to read and to contribute to even after the conference is over. We are hoping this experiment can help enrich interactions at the event itself and expand conference activities to wider participation, at other times and places.

“We’ve been looking to open conferences up this way for some time,” says Dr. Jeremy Dean, Hypothesis Director of Education. “Just like the way social annotation can make classroom reading visible, active, and social, adding annotation as a formal practice to conference sessions can enrich and extend how we engage in professional development. OLC is the perfect partner to try this digital practice out in a live context.”

“Dr. Lynette O’Keefe, Director of Research & Innovation at OLC, agrees with Jeremy, and adds that “one of the best ways to engage with new methods, pedagogy, or technology is to experience it. Participants will be able to experience social annotation in action while engaging more deeply with each other, the panelists, and their independent goals for workshop takeaways.” 

You’re invited to join Jeremy, Lynette, and others at the OLC Innovate Research Summit in Chicago, on Wednesday, April 1 from 8:30-noon.

There’s already a rich history of interaction between our organizations. In 2019, Hypothesis collaborated with OLC and their community on two events:

As a part of OLC Live! during OLC Accelerate 2019, Hypothesis and AnnotatED joined OLC and volunteers from dozens of institutions to hold a series of virtual events, including the Online International Summit, a design battle, a virtual escape room, a virtual speed networking lounge on annotation, and a salon on annotation with UC Colorado Denver’s Remi Kalir. We’re working with OLC now to distill outcomes from the rich discussions about open education during the Summit, which involved educators from every region of the world.

During OLC Innovate 2019 in Denver, Hypothesis had OLC’s support to hold an AnnotatED Summit that brought together educators and technologists — face-to-face and virtually — to share their experiences with annotation and participate in hands-on activities to incorporate annotation into teaching and learning practices. The highlight of the event was the mini-keynote from UC Colorado Denver’s Manuel Espinoza on his work with students to incorporate education as a basic human right in the Colorado state constitution.

We’re looking forward to another successful collaboration between Hypothesis and OLC at the Research summit, and we invite you to join us! Register for OLC Innovate 2020 in Chicago and subscribe to annotation news from Hypothesis to hear the details on what’s happening next with Hypothesis, OLC, AnnotatED, and annotation.

About Jeremy Dean

Jeremy Dean is the Director of Education at Hypothesis, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving online conversation through annotation. Jeremy was previously the Director of Education at Genius, where he facilitated educational applications of their interactive archive of literary and historical texts. Jeremy is a scholar-educator with fifteen years of experience teaching at both the college and high school levels. He received a PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin where he worked as a Project Leader in the Digital Writing and Research Lab for four years developing units and lesson plans around a variety of digital tools. He also worked as a Program Coordinator at the University of Texas Humanities Institute, overseeing their education initiatives.

About Lynette O’Keefe

Lynette provides leadership for the OLC Research Center for Digital Learning and Leadership. Prior, she was the Director, Learning Enhancement for the Center for Learning Experimentation, Application, and Research at the University of North Texas. Lynette’s experience spans the educational pipeline from K-12 to public universities and community colleges, and in addition to her digital learning and leadership roles, she has served in a number of positions in Academic Affairs, Enrollment Management, and Educational Partnerships. She has worked extensively with public, private, corporate, and philanthropic organizations, was involved in two State of Texas Star-Award winning initiatives, and led the statewide Texas Reverse Transfer Initiative, resulting in more than 7,000 degrees awarded within the first year of the program and policy mandate.

Lynette also teaches Quantitative Methods and Research Methods courses for the University of North Texas, and has a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration, an M.S. in Educational Psychology, and a B.A. in Psychology. In her spare time, Lynette practices yoga, reads everything from YA to historical non-fiction, and is involved in her community in Denton, TX.