Do you need help ensuring your students are completing the required reading for a course? Is it challenging to know where students are struggling with the content? Are you teaching online and longing for authentic discussions around the course texts? If any of these questions are on your mind, Perusall may be a useful tool to explore.

Perusall is a social annotation tool integrated into Canvas. Students can purchase their textbooks in Perusall, or you can upload readings, videos, and more to Perusall. Students can read, highlight, and comment on the text in Perusall. Additionally, they can engage with their fellow students, share thoughts on the content, and ask questions about what they are reading or watching.

Perusall has many features, like automatically grading students’ engagement, creating a Student Confusion Report summarizing what items confuse students, and allowing students to work in small groups to discuss their reading.

Perusall has recently rolled out a Course Choice program to support the tool better. If you aren’t using a textbook directly in Perusall and are instead uploading your own content, you can now choose if you would like students to pay a platform access fee of $0 – $30. While the default amount is $15, you can decrease or increase the amount your students pay. If you choose $0, Perusall asks you to take action to support them in another way, like spreading the word about Perusall. As many of us have watched effective academic technology tools come and go, this change in Perusall shows an increased need for funding to help with continued updates, maintenance, and support. Here is more info on making this choice in Perusall.

If Perusall fits your needs, consider using it. If you are unsure, try it out for student syllabus review or to have students read and annotate one course reading. Be aware of the new Course Choice system that will come up when setting up a new course. Reach out to the CTLE for support and check to see if we have any Perusall training sessions coming up.