Perusall
Perusall is a social learning platform that prepares students for class. The platform incorporates a novel e-book reader with collaborative annotation tools to ensure students learn more, come to class prepared, and become more engaged in the learning experience.
- Engages students outside of class.
- Allows for collective, threaded annotating of readings.
- Comments are collected into a single document, allowing instructors to see which topics students struggled with most.
- Creates interaction by giving students space to respond to each other’s comments.
- Student analytics are available to guide in-person lecture content.
- Students’ interactions with the readings can be scored and shared to Canvas.
Getting Started
Instructor Resources
Enabling Perusall in the Course Navigation
To add the Perusall tool to your Canvas course:
- Open your Canvas course.
- Follow the steps in the ‘How do I manage Course Navigation links?‘ guide to enable the link for Perusall.
- Click Save.
- Click the Perusall link to navigate to Perusall and automatically generate your blank Perusall course.
You may wish to review these brief tutorials from Perusall:
- How do I add, edit, or delete a document?
- What textbooks can I use with Perusall? Can I also use my own documents?
- How do I adopt a textbook using Perusall?
- What types of files can be uploaded to Perusall?
- How do I use Podcasts in Perusall?
- How do I use video in Perusall?
- What are hashtags and how do they work?
Creating Perusall Assignments
To create a Perusall assignment and sync it to Canvas:
- Create the assignment in Perusall according to the ‘How do I add, edit, or delete a document?‘ guide.
- View the assignment in the Assignments panel on your course home page in Perusall and then click the Copy full title for LMS button in the toolbar.
- Create a corresponding assignment in Canvas. See the Canvas Instructor Guide for specific instructions to create a Canvas assignment.
Note: To ensure the Perusall assignment properly links with the Canvas assignment, name the Canvas assignment by pasting the name you copied from Perusall. - Test that the assignment linkage works by launching the assignment in Canvas. You should be taken directly to the correct assignment in Perusall.
Students must access the Perusall assignments by clicking through from Canvas. Accessing assignments directly in Perusall will prevent the student’s score from properly synching to Canvas.
The following video demonstrates this process.
Synching Canvas Groups to Perusall
All students will initially be placed in Group 1 within Perusall. After a student launches Perusall, they will be relocated to a group within Perusall matching their group in Canvas. Any student not assigned to a group in Canvas will remain in Group 1 in Perusall.
To synch the Canvas groups to Perusall:
- In Perusall click Settings > Grouping.
- Select Manually assign students to groups.
- Enable Apply groups from Canvas.
- Click Save Changes.
Previewing Content in Perusall
To check your Perusall assignments in student view, you must use the Perusall Student View. The Canvas feature will not pass through to Perusall.
To enable Perusall Student View:
- Locate the left-hand navigation bar.
- Click Student View.
When you do this, Perusall will create a temporary student account and log you in to that account. When you are done, log out or close your browser window. You can then log back in to your instructor account.
Student Resources
Getting Started with Perusall
When your instructor connects it to Canvas, you will be automatically added to the Perusall course.
Completing Perusall Reading Assignments
To access your Perusall reading assignments, navigate to the Canvas assignment and click through to Perusall. Navigating directly within Perusall will prevent your score from properly syncing to Canvas.
- Support
- Online Documentation
- Licensing and Policies
- Compatibility
Licensing
This tool is available to students when purchased as part of their course materials.