What is Perusall? Perusall is an external tool that allows students to collaboratively annotate the readings with others in the class, using a digital text for specific interactive assignments. Students can in real-time or asynchronously, highlighting text, ask questions, post and reply to comments in new or existing threads where each thread is a chat with one or more members of the class.  Perusall provides data around student reading and annotation patterns. For example, the analytics can display students’ viewing time, active reading time, and annotation numbers. Perusall produces a simple ‘confusion report’ around a set reading that highlights passages that students misunderstood, disagreed with each other about, or which postings students were most engaged.

As a collaborative reading platform Perusall can be used:

• To foster engagement by students collaborating and discussing readings
• To build a sense of community among the students
• As a task for students to demonstrate engagement with the subject material.
• Perusall may also be used for low stake formative assessments.

1. Del M. N. Bharath & Steven Brownson (2021) Perusall (www.perusall.com): Read, connect, discuss!, Journal of Public Affairs Education, 27:3, 372-375, DOI: 10.1080/15236803.2021.1929021

Adding your first Perusall Readings:

After adding the tool to your iLearn site, you will need to create the Persuall class and assignments in Perusall and then decide what type of readings you wish the students to discuss and annotate. 

Adding readings to your course:

1. Click the Perusall tool in Ilearn
2. Click on Library on your course home page.
3. To add a book from Perusall's catalog, click Add, click Textbook (*there may be fees associated with textbooks)
4. To upload a reading from a .PDF or EPUB format from your computer, click Add, then click  Documents from my computer or Add, and click Documents from Dropbox.
5. To add a web page as a reading, click Add, click Web page. Paste the URL in the field

Creating the Perusall Assignment:

1. Click on Assignments on your course home page.
2. Click Add assignment and select the document you want to assign.
3. Select the part of the document to assign, specify a deadline, and click Save changes. Learn more about managing assignments