Perusall is a text-based social annotation/commenting/discussion tool. Instructors provide students with a text, and students use commenting to have an asynchronous discussion about the text. Depending on instructor settings, Perusall can auto-grade student work and provide instructors with analytics about how students are engaging with articles, chapters, webpages, videos, podcasts, and more.
Perusall can help increase student engagement, build community between your students, impact their motivation to complete readings and help them collaborate and communicate with each other. It can also be used in face-to-face classes as a supplement to in-person activities and instruction and in entirely online courses.
Getting Started
It is recommended that instructors begin the process by reviewing Perusall’s Getting Started Guide for Instructors.
Teaching Ideas and Use Cases
Flipping/Blended Classes
In a face-to-face course with multiple reading assignments, include all readings in Perusall. Ask students to read and comment before class and then review their comments before your in-class discussion. Star comments as you review the work students have done so you can use those comments to launch a more thorough dive into the content when you meet face-to-face.
- A flipped learning example from King’s College London
- Sigmon and Bodek in the Journal of Chemistry Education: Use of an Online Social Annotation Platform to Enhance a Flipped Organic Chemistry Course
The Confusion Report
Integrate a difficult text (video, reading, infographic, etc.) and ask students to fill it with questions they have. Use the “confusion report” included in Perusall to quickly pull together topics to cover in more detail in course videos or in-person sessions.
Annotation Practice
Add a Perusall assignment in which the text is about annotating. Students can practice using the features while learning about good annotation practices. Check out this article to learn more about annotation.
Lively Student Engagement
Read the experiences of a series of Vanderbilt instructors using Perusall in various fields, including law, chemistry, and business.
Peer Review
Using “differentiated assignments” and student upload folders in Perusall can allow students to use the annotation features of Perusall to give feedback to classmates. Perusall peer review directions.
Multimedia
Perusall texts don’t have to just be readings. You can integrate the annotation features with video, podcast and images. Integrating multimedia in your courses can lead to more inclusive teaching practices, helping students visualize course concepts, promote deeper learning and help students engage with varied content. Learn how to integrate video and podcasts as assignments or library texts in Perusall.
Use Cases
- Using Perusall to make subject readings interactive and engaging: University of Melbourne with faculty use cases
- Teaching with Perusall and Social Annotation – Highlights from a Conversation: Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching, Derek Bruff
- Engaging Course Materials with Perusall – FIU Online Insider
- Academic Technology in Action Digital Annotation and Collaborative Analysis using Perusall — Amherst University, includes specific strategies in different disciplines
- Insightfull Collaborative Reading with Perusall – University of Amsterdam
- Perusall Testimonies: How are Washington State University Faculty Using Perusall?
- Yale University: Use Cases for Perusall
- Boston College: Communicating with Students About Perusall
- Abdulrahaman MD, Faruk N, Oloyede AA, Surajudeen-Bakinde NT, Olawoyin LA, Mejabi OV, Imam-Fulani YO, Fahm AO, Azeez AL. Multimedia tools in the teaching and learning processes: A systematic review. Heliyon. 2020 Nov 2;6(11):e05312. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05312. PMID: 33195834; PMCID: PMC7644889.
- Video Annotation Suggestions from Harvard University
- Active Collaborative Video-Watching: Using Perusall to Engage Students in Collaborative Learning
- See more examples on the Perusall blog and on the Perusall success stories page.
Citation: Perusall. North Carolina State University. Retrieved February 24, 2024 from https://teaching-resources.delta.ncsu.edu/perusall/.
This teaching guide, which has been modified from its original form, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.