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Social Annotation with Perusall

What is Perusall and what is it for?

You may have seen your students highlight sentences or sections of material they are reading and annotating or adding notes in the margins. Maybe it is something you do as well. Perusall is a social annotation tool that allows students and teachers to create annotations digitally and share them with others on the same document. Social annotation, also known as collaborative annotation, is a great strategy for making readings more interactive, promoting critical thinking, and facilitating focused, dynamic, open dialogue on course readings. 

Check out this video for a quick overview of Perusall and social annotation. 

How can you use Perusall in your course?

Perusall can be used in a number of ways to support student learning. Below are a few examples

  • Have students comment on assigned readings prior to synchronous class sessions. This allows instructors to identify patterns, note the ‘muddy’ areas in the readings, and see where questions are arising.
  • Create asynchronous reading groups to facilitate asynchronous small group discussions (for large classes). Instructors can then interact with smaller groups of students at a time.
  • Add open-ended discussion prompts and questions to help students engage more meaningfully with course materials and each other.

How can you access Perusall?

Perusall is integrated into Canvas Assignments so you can easily set up reading assignments through Canvas. Although you can access Perusall directly from the Perusall website, we strongly recommend that you launch it from within your Canvas course. This will minimize confusion and ensure a seamless experience for your students.  

This video walks you through the basic steps for creating a Perusall Assignment in Canvas.

Where can you get help for Perusall?

It is important to provide students clear guidance and expectations for social annotation. Perusall suggests sharing two documents with students

  1. A one-page rubric explaining the tool and how it works that you can modify for your class.
  2. Example annotations to help students get an idea of how to engage in social annotation.

Perusall provides detailed guidelines with step by step directions for setting up and using Perusall in your courses.

Accessibility

Perusall offers features for increasing accessibility of reading materials and assignments.

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