Overview
If you are transitioning from Hypothesis or Perusall to Harmonize, this guide will help you re-create familiar annotation activities using Harmonize’s Social Reading, Discussions, and Peer Review tools. While all three platforms help students read actively and engage with each other, they approach annotation differently:
- Hypothesis is a social annotation tool built around open-web or LMS-embedded text annotation.
- Perusall is a social reading platform that blends annotation with AI-generated engagement scoring.
- Harmonize provides LMS-native annotation workflows with structured milestones, flexible visibility settings, instructor-controlled grading, and rich multimedia support.
Harmonize emphasizes:
- Stable materials (PDF-based annotation)
- Transparent, completion-based auto-grading (optional)
- Group-based and private annotation options
- Flexible media support for documents, images, and videos
- Multimodal feedback and peer review
💡 Insight: Harmonize provides a fully instructor-controlled annotation environment with predictable materials, adjustable visibility (individual, groups, or whole-class), and clear, transparent grading expectations.
This guide walks through how to migrate five common annotation activities—documents, videos, images, peer review, and private annotation—from Hypothesis or Perusall to Harmonize.
Migrating Common Annotation Activities to Harmonize
Below are five kinds of annotation activities you may have used in Hypothesis or Perusall, and how to recreate them in Harmonize. Read through them all or skip ahead:
- 1. Document Annotation (PDFs, Word Documents, Slides)
- 2. Video Annotation
- 3. Image Annotation
- 4. Peer Review
- 5. Private Annotation Activities
- Bonus: Annotations with Changing Visibility
1. Document Annotation (PDFs, Word Documents, Slides)
This replaces annotation workflows in both Hypothesis and Perusall for text-based materials.
How to migrate
- Convert Word or PowerPoint files to PDF.
- Create a Social Reading assignment.
- Upload the PDF.
- Add instructions or prompts.
- Note: We will prefill your activity with some basic instructions, which you can use, edit, or overwrite.
- Set one or more Milestones for the number of top-level annotations (comments with highlights and pins) and the number of replies to peers
- Note: Milestones are multiple due dates, so you can require top-level annotations on one day and replies to peers on another.
- Optional: Enable auto-grading
- Canvas users: Can optionally add a rubric in Canvas
What students can do
- Highlight text and add in-text comments
- Drop pins and add in-text comments
- Reply to peers
- Annotate in groups or full class
- Annotate privately (private to peers, visible to instructor)
💡 Insight: Harmonize Social Reading provides structure—Milestones and completion-based grading—so instructors can guide and assess annotation clearly without relying on AI engagement models.
2. Video Annotation
Use: Harmonize Discussions and ask students to Respond within Video
Perusall supports timestamped text comments on videos; Hypothesis does not support video annotation. Harmonize offers timestamped text comments plus the ability to pin and draw on paused video frames and to provide holistic multimodal feedback.
How to migrate
- Create a Discussion activity.
- Upload a video, record a video, or record your screen (or allow students to upload/record).
- Students can:
- Leave timestamped written comments (See Respond within Video)
- Pause the video and drop pins or draw on captured frames (See Respond within Video)
- Provide non-timestamped multimodal feedback (long-form text, video or audio reflections, attached files)
- Students cannot leave video comments at specific timestamps in another video. However, they can reference timestamps in their video feedback on the video. Learn more by watching the short video in Engaging Students with Video Recording and Critique.
Comparison with other tools
- Hypothesis: Annotation of transcripts
- Perusall: Timestamped comments; no frame drawing
- Harmonize: Timestamped text comments + frame markup + multimodal reflections
💡 Insight: Harmonize supports deeper video analysis by combining precise timeline-based written feedback, frame-level visual markup, and holistic multimodal responses.
3. Image Annotation
Two Options in Harmonize
Option A: Social Reading (convert image to PDF)
Best when you want structured, pin-based annotation similar to Perusall’s figure annotation.
- Convert image to PDF
- Create a Harmonize Social Reading activity
- Upload your images as PDFs
- Students drop pins and comment
- Works with whole class, groups, or private visibility
Option B: Discussions (native image tools)
Best for drawing or more expressive critique.
- Create a Harmonize Discussion
- Upload the image in the instructions
- By default, the image thumbnail will be small. Change it to be large as it's an important element of the instructions.
- Students can:
- Use our image annotation tools to add pins or draw on the image
- Provide multimodal feedback (including video recording and screen recording)
💡 Insight: Social Reading supports structured, assignment-driven image analysis, while Discussions support more flexible, creative, multimodal image critique. If you want students to reply to directly to specific pins or you want to specify (and auto-grade on) a certain number of pins and comments, choose Option A. If you want students to draw on the image or provide other kinds of feedback, choose Option B.
4. Peer Review
Perusall’s peer review is annotation-based, focused on comment quotas, and tied to the reading workflow. Harmonize’s Peer Review tool supports a wider range of file types and multimodal feedback.
How to migrate
- Create a Peer Review assignment.
- Students upload documents, images, or videos.
- Instructors can assign reviewers automatically or manually (by placing students in groups).
- Students provide feedback using:
- In-text comments (document critique)
- Longer-form written commentary (in a textbox where we can enforce a word count minimum)
- Rubric scoring
- Audio or video reflections
- Image markup tools
- Timestamped comments + pins/drawing on video frames
Key differences from Perusall
- Perusall: Annotation-based, quota-driven, AI-scored
- Harmonize: Holistic, multimodal, instructor-defined criteria
- In Harmonize, students submit one synthesized review that can include annotations on documents, videos, and images. The original creator of the work can then respond holistically, rather than responding to individual annotations one-at-a-time. Students can respond back-and-forth indefinitely. Harmonize makes peer review a conversation.
💡 Insight: Harmonize Peer Review is ideal for drafts, multimedia projects, presentations, and video assignments—not just text-based readings.
5. Private Annotation Activities
Use: Social Reading (restricted visibility) or Individual Assignments
In Harmonize, "private" means private from peers, not private from the instructor. This differs from Hypothesis (which allows fully private student-only notes) and Perusall (which allows private notes but not private inline annotation).
Option A: Social Reading with restricted visibility
- Access Social Reading Settings and do the following:
- Change visibility to private
- Delete the second milestone for replies to peers
- Students annotate privately
- Instructors see all annotations
- Ideal for reading journals or formative assessment
Option B: Individual Discussion Assignment
Students upload materials and annotate with:
- Document Critique
- Long-form text commentary
- Audio or video reflections
- Image markup tools
- Timestamped comments + pins/drawing on video frames
💡 Insight: Harmonize uniquely supports instructor-visible private annotations—ideal for journals, reflections, and low-stakes comprehension checks.
Bonus: Annotations with Changing Visibility
Both Social Reading and Discussions allow instructors to adjust visibility settings throughout an assignment.
Example visibility pathways
- Private → Whole Class: Students begin annotating individually, then see classmates’ annotations.
- Individual → Small Group → Whole Class: Scaffolds complexity and supports collaborative reading.
- Private → Peer Review: Students annotate privately, then share their work with assigned reviewers.
💡 Insight: Harmonize’s visibility controls support evolving pedagogical goals, enabling instructors to shift between private, group, and whole-class engagement as needed.
Conclusion
Harmonize provides a flexible, LMS-native alternative to Hypothesis and Perusall, supporting document annotation, video and image critique, multimodal peer review, and structured private or group-based annotation spaces. Instructors gain:
- Stable, predictable materials
- Clear, completion-based grading
- Flexible visibility controls
- Multimodal feedback tools
- Support for both structured and creative annotation
For instructors seeking a unified, instructor-controlled approach to social reading and annotation, Harmonize offers a powerful, adaptable solution that supports deeper engagement across text, images, and video.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Harmonize have AI-based scoring like Perusall?
- No. Harmonize does not use AI to evaluate engagement. Instead, we offer completion-based auto-grading.
How does auto-grading work in Social Reading?
- Auto-grading is completion-based. Instructors set requirements for the number of top-level annotations and peer replies. Harmonize automatically calculates the completion score and allows instructors to adjust grades manually.
Can students make private annotations?
- Yes, with an important distinction. Students can annotate privately from peers using restricted visibility settings in Social Reading, and instructors can still see all annotations. Harmonize does not support student-only privacy like Hypothesis’s “Only Me” notes.
Does Harmonize allow students to annotate web pages, EPUB, or e-texts?
- No. Harmonize focuses on stable, instructor-controlled materials. Convert these documents to PDF before uploading them.
Does Harmonize support groups?
- Yes. Social Reading and Discussions can be assigned to groups so each group gets its own annotation space.
Can Harmonize replace Perusall’s “confusion report”?
- Harmonize does not generate automated summaries. Instead, instructors can quickly view each student’s complete annotations in a consolidated interface, making it easy to spot confusion or gaps.
How do students learn to use Harmonize tools?
- Most students find annotation and commenting tools intuitive and easy to learn. If you want to provide your students with guides, you will find a wide variety of resources at Harmonize support. See in particular the following guides: