Getting started with Perusall

Instructor set up

1. To set up your Perusall course, go to a content area of your LEARN course, add a module to act as your Perusall access point, then select from Existing Activities, then click External Learning Tools, and select Perusall 1.3 Course from the links provided.

2. Launch Perusall and create your D2L-Perusall integrated course. If you already have a Perusall account you will asked to confirm that you want your account linked to LEARN.

3. Set up your Perusall course settings and create your assignments. (see the Perusall help documentation). If you wish to copy your assignments from a previous term or course please follow these instructions.

4. Your LEARN course roster will upload automatically into the Perusall course site. The Perusall default is to randomly assign students to groups of 20, but you can modify the group size or assign specific groups (settings > grouping). Since the rosters are synched, you can set up groups any time, although be mindful of drop/add dates.

5. You can now assign your students to the same groups in Perusall as in LEARN if that aligns with your course goals, recognizing that if groups are too small the levels of engagement may be diminished. Note: all assignments must have the same grouping if using this method.

Linking individual Perusall assignments in LEARN

It is not necessary to create individual links to each Perusall assignment in your LEARN content; however, if you would like to do so, you can create "deep links" into the corresponding Perusall assignment. To do this:

1. You must first create the assignment in Perusall.

2. Go to Existing Activities and scroll down to Perusall 1.3 Assignment.

3. A window will pop up that will allow you to select a Perusall assignment to link.

4. Assignments will automatically be created in the gradebook as individual items (LEARN defaults items to 10 points) but points can be adjusted manually in your gradebook and/or moved into a Category. 

Grading in Perusall 

There are a variety of metrics that you can use to score the annotations within Perusall. You can use and adapt their suggested methods and always override. More information on using scoring in Perusall is available in their Scoring Document.

Grade sync

• If you would like to automatically sync the average of all Perusall assignments to a single gradebook column in Brightspace, launch into Perusall, select Settings > scoring > Grade sync to LMS > Automatically sync students' average scores to LMS, and then click Save changes. Note: the LEARN default is 10 points you will need to update.

• If you would like to sync individual assignment scores to multiple columns in the Brightspace gradebook, launch into Perusall, select Settings > scoring > Grade sync to LMS > Automatically sync students' scores to LMS, and then click Save changes.

• More information about syncing grades with LTI 1.3 is available on the Perusall knowledge base.

Communicating with your students about Perusall

It is a good idea to explain why you are using Perusall and how you hope it helps them achieve the learning outcomes of the course. You might include details such as:

• How many annotations they should write.

• How long their annotations should be.

• Expectations for interacting with their classmates. For example, “At least 2 of your 7 comments should be in response to a classmate.”

• What the goal of an annotation is. For example, “Each annotation should point to a specific rhetorical choice made in the text, and explain the effect that choice creates for the reader.”

• What a successful annotation looks like. Consider writing a sample comment in the document yourself and asking your students to look at it as a model of what they’re trying to do.

After the first Perusall assignment in particular, touch base with your students about their work, either individually as a class. It’s likely that the first set of student annotations will not meet your expectations. By explaining ways students can improve, and highlighting a few examples of strong annotations written by their classmates, you can help them to think about how to make progress on Perusall assignments throughout the term. You might wish to have the first Perusall assignment not count (if you are scoring them).

Do you still have questions?