The winners of the 2024 Social Learning Innovator Awards have been announced by Hypothesis

The Social Learning Innovator Awards 2024, hosted by the social annotation provider, Hypothesis, celebrated outstanding educators and institutions that have revolutionized the world of education through the use of social learning across various disciplines.

The organization honored educators and institutions that excel in using social annotation to foster engaging learning experiences. This year, they invited educators to nominate themselves or their peers who have demonstrated innovative and impactful uses of social annotation.

The winners were selected from the award categories of higher education ‘Instructors’ of every discipline, ‘Administrators,’ and a special ‘Institutional Award’. This final award celebrates an institution that has adopted social learning at a broader scale, demonstrating a unique and transformative approach to collaborative learning across multiple disciplines or departments.

The evaluation criteria for the awards focused on assessing the impact of social learning in the classroom and the innovative ways instructors or admins use social learning to increase student engagement, peer collaboration, learning outcomes, and course comprehension. 

Joe Ferraro, CEO of Hypothesis, stated, “We believe that student engagement is the foundation of academic success. Our winners and nominees today have not only embraced that belief but have also exemplified the power of social learning in driving meaningful, collaborative experiences in education.”

The Institution-Wide winner from last year, Kim Grewe, also shared her enthusiasm at what Hypothesis was able to achieve at Northern Virginia Community College: “We believe in the power of social annotation for our online learners in particular…this tool is something that is so simple to use and really does boost engagement, leading to more students passing and moving onto the next stage.”

The winners are listed below:

• Humanities and Arts: Brandon Marshall, Contra Costa College
• Writing: Chip Gladson, Montgomery College, Maryland
• STEM: Melanie Lenahan, Raritan Valley Community College
• Health Science: Rachel Derr, Rutgers University – Camden
• Business and Economics: Dr. Larry C. Giunipero, Florida State University
• Social Sciences: Lyra Stein, Rutgers University – New Jersey
• Institutional: Sarah Riforgiate and Amy Mangrich, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee
• Administrator: Dr. Ashley Love, University of Incarnate Word
• OER: Diana Fordham, Missouri Southern State University
• Pedagogy: Caroline T. Schroeder, University of Oklahoma
• AI: Eric Conrad, California State University – Stanislaus

This past week’s awards ceremony featured the winners, who shared firsthand insights on how social learning transformed their classrooms, their real-world success stories illustrating the impact of social learning on both teaching and student engagement, and actionable strategies to apply to enhance teaching methods. The ceremony also had a Q&A session with the awardees.