Perusall: Getting Started

What is Perusall?

Perusall is a collaborative annotation tool that turns solitary reading assignments into engaging, collaborative, collective learning activities. Perusall helps students master readings faster, understand the material better, and get more out of the course. To achieve this goal, students will collaboratively annotate the readings with their peers.

Instructors assign readings to students. Perusall assigns students into smaller groups within the class. Perusall allows students to annotate the assigned readings and engage with the reading material in a style similar to social media posting.

How to get started in Perusall

You can start a new annotation thread in Perusall by highlighting text, asking a question, or posting a comment.
You can also add a reply or comment to an existing thread. Each thread is like a chat with one or more members of your class, and it happens in real time.

The goal in annotating each reading assignment is to stimulate discussion by posting good questions or comments and helping others by answering their questions.

Research shows that by annotating thoughtfully, most people learn more and get better grades.

How to Annotate Intentionally?

So what is “annotating thoughtfully”?

Effective annotations deeply engage points in the readings, stimulate discussion, offer informative questions or comments, and help others by addressing their questions or confusions.

Suggestions:

To help you connect with classmates, you can “mention” a classmate in a comment or question to have them notified by email (they’ll also see a notification immediately if online), and you’ll also be notified when your classmates respond to your questions.
You can annotate and comment on the readings and the posts of other students. Instructor can review and comment too.
You can write full comments, “like” comments, use hashtags, link URLs in their comments and even use emoticons.

Watch a video about Perusall
For more information check out - https://perusall.com/

Getting Overwhelmed with comments posted by others?

This can be fixed by going to the top of the reader page. Click on "comments" tab. Adjust how to see the reader page. So for example, you want to annotate/read without seeing other people's work -- you want a clean page with nothing but the assigned material. There is a tab you can select to filter out all other students' work. When you are ready to look at all annotations, adjust the setting as needed.

Note: Late Submission Policy - This course has a Late Submission Policy. However it does not apply to Perusall, as it is an external tool integrated with Canvas. So be sure to complete the Perusall readings during the given time window.

How to Access Perusall

Access Perusall and create a free account then select Create or enroll in a course then select I am a Student. Use the following course code to join this course CHICO-KA9J8.

Starting a Perusall Assignment

Once you access the Perusall assignment, a new tab will load in your browser.
You will be directed to the course homepage, which shows you a list of all the reading assignments and due dates that have been assigned for the entire course.
Choose and click on the link for the appropriate assignment.

Starting Conversations with Classmates

When you open a document, you'll see highlights superimposed on the document that represent comments that you and other students have entered.
Yellow highlights indicate comments or questions by you or other students; blue highlights indicate comments from your instructor.
To start a conversation, highlight some text; once you finish highlighting, you will see a panel open on the right where you can type your comment. Press Enter or Return to submit the comment; your classmates will see it appear in real time. (If you are having trouble highlighting text, see this page.)
When someone responds to your question or comment, you will receive a notification by email and you can post a reply by either signing on or merely replying to the email.
To add to a conversation started by one of your classmates, simply click on the highlight in the text to open up the conversation panel, type your comment, and then press Enter.
You can also highlight part of a figure rather than text by using the toolbar buttons at the top. When you have elected to highlight a figure, click and drag to draw a box around the area of interest, or simply click to drop a map pin.
While reading the document, change which comments you see by clicking the filter dropdown at the top of the page (which says All comments by default).

Perusall Grading Evaluation and Criteria

Please ensure a minimum of 5 original comments/annotations on the readings spread out over the length of the reading. Respond to the comments/annotations of other students - a minimum of 2 comments.

The scoring in Perusall is based on the:

Total number of annotations, in college level writing - minimum of 5 annotations required.
Number of interactions or response post, to the annotations of other students - minimum of 2 required.
Average quality of annotations.
Distribution of annotations across the reading.

To maximize your points

Ensure the interactions are relevant to the reading.
Spread the comments out over the entire reading.
Avoid banal comments (Ex: LOL, Love your comment, "what a great idea").
Use college level writing skills* (see bottom of the page) while writing your post.
Be sure to read the rubric on the Canvas Perusall page.
See some examples of how quality is measured.

Perusall: Course Scoring

Keeping track of your scores

In order to see some details of a particular score, click My scores, then click on that particular assignment's score in the score column.

If you don't see a score for an assignment, it's because your instructor hasn't released the scores for that assignment yet.

You may continue to ask questions, answer questions, and make comments outside of the context of a particular reading assignment. However, note that if you edit a comment that was counted towards an assignment whose deadline has passed, that comment may no longer count towards your score for that assignment.

Note: If any of the links on this page are not active - click here.
See some examples of how quality is measured.

What is College Level Writing?*

*College level writing skills includes paying attention to:

writing mechanics: grammar, sentence structure, spelling, etc.
planning a writing strategy.
communicating ideas clearly and concisely.
constructing a reasoned, demonstrable argument.
effectively marshaling evidence and using sources appropriately.
organizing ideas effectively.