"Perusall" is a social learning platform that enables students to engage with their peers and faculty while completing reading assignments in their eTextbooks or through other assignments. Students can collaborate, like when using a Google Doc, and engage with one another like popular social media platforms.
How do students use Perusall?
Below are outlined steps for using "Perusall" to complete assignments in your course.
STEP 1: Acess Perusall from Canvas to Activate your Course
- In your Canvas course, click on the tab on the left-hand navigation panel that says "Perusall."
- This will activate your course in the system and make it available to students.
- In the upper right-hand corner you will see your name. Select "edit profile" from the dropdown menu.
- Make sure that the time zone is set to (GMT -07:00) America/Los Angeles, regardless of where you are located as this will determine the time of the due dates for students.
STEP 2: Set your Due Dates
- From the assignments tab, you will see the weekly assignments that are required for students.
- Select the assignment and click the cog icon to edit the due date.
- Update the due date in the options tab to the Sunday date and the time to 11:59 pm.
- When finished, click the ok button at the bottom of the page.
STEP 3: Starting conversations with students and viewing discussions within the text
- Navigate to Course home and open an assignment in the Assignments tab.
- When you (or your students) open a document, you'll see highlights superimposed on the document that represent comments that students have entered.
- Highlight text by clicking and dragging. You will see a new conversation panel appear on the right side of the page. Enter a comment or question, and press Enter to save it.
- When you start a comment thread, the text you highlighted will show in blue; student comments are highlighted in yellow. When someone responds to a question or comment, the original author receives a notification by email and can post their own response by replying to the email. Students that ask a question can also indicate that one or more of the responses answers their original question.
- Control the highlights that you see by clicking the All comments filter dropdown at the top of the page and selecting a filter.
Step 4: How to engage students + tips
- Perusall assignments function similarly to the discussion board assignments in Canvas and faculty are expected to engage students in meaningful ways throughout the week.
- Familiarize yourself with the weekly topic and questions to help drive the conversation or provide clarity for students.
- This assignment is auto-graded and will automatically update grades in real-time as students engage in the assignment. If a student's grade does not post, please enter it manually into Canvas or have the student click the Perusall link directly from the assignment in Canvas to fix the issue.
- Late work will be accepted for up to 5 days after the deadline per the DE late assignment policy. It is up to you as the instructor to take the appropriate penalty for late assignments per the policy.
- It is vital that you engage students and on Mondays after the previous week's discussion has closed to click on the assignment in Perusall and run the Confusion Report. This will indicate areas and topics in the text where students struggled. You should take time to make students a weekly video, or audio and/or offer a support session to help address some of the confusion in the targeted areas. Since assignments no longer require grading, use the time you normally would spend grading to support students.
You are all set up with Perusall! Once you click on the link from Canvas you can quickly get your class set up and ready for the term.
Perusall Support
- Self-help guides for a variety of topics can be accessed from the Perusall Site here: Faculty Support with Perusall
- Contact Perusall support directly by selecting the "get help" button next to your name in Perusall and clicking on the "contact Perusall support" button to create a ticket directly in the platform.
- You can also contact them directly via email at support@perusall.com