Perusall

Perusall


What is Perusall?

Perusall is an annotation tool that integrates with Canvas. Perusall allows students and instructors to discuss, comment on, collaboratively mark up, and post questions on documents and textbooks. Students can take notes and answer each other's questions directly within the text, while instructors can create assignments and groups for students to work collaboratively on a reading assignment. Instructors can access various statistics about each student’s engagement with an assignment using the Analytics feature in Perusall.

Availability

Perusall is available in Canvas for faculty to use with their Canvas Assignments. 

Accessibility

Accessibility testing for this product was completed on September 22, 2021. Any subsequent updates to the product or associated input devices after this date are not reflected on the current assessment.

Perusall meets most of Teacher College’s accessibility criteria. Perusall has several features that can be leveraged to increase accessibility of reading materials and assignments to students. 

  • Built-in read aloud feature: Allows students to listen to a reading without having to use specialized screen reader software
  • Keyboard shortcuts: Refer to their website for Perusall’s Keyboard Navigation Resources
  • Resizable and responsive user interface components: Zooming or resizing to change text size within the reading materials.
  • A "dark mode" with a darker user interface: More readable in low light conditions.

For tips and advice on how to best optimize Perusall for their assistive technology, contact TC’s OASID for assistance. To learn more about Perusall Accessibility, check their official Accessibility statement.

Tips for teaching with Perusall

Perusall aims to make students collectively read and annotate on the materials they are working on. Make sure that as an instructor, you dedicate time to participating in it with your students by revising and replying to their comments.

Perusall also has an automatic grading system based on four criteria: quality of annotations, quantity of annotation, timeliness and distribution of annotations. This is valuable information for faculty to understand the level of engagement of students. 

How to get started

  • Check this Quick start guide to understand how to use Perusall’s basic functions.

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