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Perusall: Creating a Perusall Assignment

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Perusall assignments ensure that your students do the reading and come to class prepared. The goal of each reading assignment is to stimulate discussion by encouraging students to post good questions or comments, to help others by answering their questions, and to up-vote good questions or comments to draw the attention of their classmates to important ideas [https://perusall.com/].

This article will address how to create and link Perusall assignments in your Canvas course.

While we are pleased to offer Perusall to our community, we ask you to be aware of the following considerations when using this application:

  • Copyright: The following Copyright Statement holds true for documents uploaded into Perusall as well as into Canvas.

The University expects all users of this site to respect copyright and to determine if their posted content complies with copyright law and the Terms of Use for Canvas. By uploading content into Perusall, you affirm the content was lawfully acquired and:

you are the copyright holder; or

You have obtained express permission from the copyright holder or determined such content is in the public domain under copyright law; or

You have completed a fair use evaluation and determined in good faith after reasonable inquiry that the use of the copyrighted work is a “fair use” under copyright law.

  • Accessibility: Students with disabilities who leverage assistive technology may experience difficulty reading documents loaded into Perusall using their preferred screen reader, and an alternative assignment may be required. To help minimize this, please ensure accessible PDFs are uploaded into Perusall. For assistance in creating accessible PDFs, please see the following page.

Table of Contents

This article will address the following information:

Creating the Assignment on Perusall

  1. Once you have enabled Perusall in your Course Navigation, you can click "Perusall" to open the tool in a new tab to get started creating an assignment.
  1. You will be taken to Perusall in a new window, in which you will be given several options for setting up your course if it is the first time you are entering Perusall.
    1. Though not absolutely necessary, you can identify the "Course start date" and "Course end date," as well as demographic information such as "Enrollment estimate" and "Target group size" to assist in group formation and management.
    2. Click "Save Changes" when updated.
  2. To start creating an assignment, you must first upload a document / content to Perusall. Click the "Library" tab across the top of the page to begin.
  1. Select the type of content you are uploading from the list on right-hand side.
    1. Different instructions / directions for uploading and/or selecting the content will depend on the kind of content you are selecting to add to Perusall. Follow the instructions / directions for the content type you select.
  1. Click on your uploaded content from your Library list, and click the "Assign" button to begin setting up your Perusall assignment.
  1. The content you just clicked to assign will be listed as "Part 1" of the assignment. If you would like to assign additional content to the assignment, you can click the "Add another part" button to select additional "Content to assign" from the drop down box.
  2. Click the "Next Steps" button once you have selected all of your content to assign.
  1. On the "Options" tab of the assignment set up, provide the "Submission deadline" date and time.
  2. Fill out the "Assignment name" in the text box field.

The Assignment Name filled out here on Perusall must match the eventual Canvas assignment name exactly.

  1. Fill out any specific "Instructions for students" in the large text box area.
  2. Identify a date in the "Assignment is visible to students starting on" field if you would like to hide the assignment from student view until a specific time.
  3. In the "Assign to" option, select the population of the class that will be responsible for participating in the Perusall assignment.
  4. Check off any of the additional options for the assignment:
    1. Assignment is fully anonymous
    2. Assignment is optional
    3. Do not remind students to complete this assignment
  5. When all settings have been selected, click the "Next step" button.
  1. On the "Scoring" tab, select the type of "Assignment scoring" you want to use.
    1. Use the "Use course scoring settings" to grade the Perusall assignment according to the Perusall scoring rubric set for the course.
      1. You can set your course scoring settings by clicking on "Settings" in the left-hand menu for your course and selecting the "Scoring" tab across the top, then adjusting the component area sliders to the percentage you want them to be valued at.
    2. Use the "Specify custom scoring settings for this assignment" option to set a specific Perusall scoring rubric for this specific assignment.
  2. When done click the "Save changes" button to create the Perusall assignment.

Learn more about scoring and grades on Perusall by checking out their "How Perusall Scoring Works" resource.

Connecting a Perusall Assignment to Canvas

Grades are sent to Canvas from Perusall as a percentage, rather than as a raw score. Canvas will apply that percentage to the assignment based on the number of points you have set for that assignment in Canvas. For example, if your lowest possible assignment score is 0 and highest possible assignment score in Perusall is 5, and the assignment is set in the LMS to be worth 10 points, a score of 4 will be sent across to the LMS as 80% and will show up in the LMS as 8/10. For this reason, we recommend that you set up assignments in your LMS to be worth the same number of points as it is worth in Perusall.

Once an assignment has been created in Perusall, you can connect it to Canvas so that students can launch the activity directly from Canvas, as well as have grades synced / sent back to Canvas from Perusall for the assignment.

  1. In Perusall, find the assignment you made and click the "Copy full title for LMS" button, which will copy the Perusall assignment name to your clipboard to be pasted later.

The Assignment Name filled out on Perusall must match the eventual Canvas assignment name exactly.

  1. Navigate to your Canvas course and follow the steps for Creating an Assignment, being sure to paste / retype the name of the Perusall assignment exactly in the Canvas assignment's title.
  2. Select the "External Tool" option when setting the "Submission Type" for the Canvas assignment.
  3. Use the "Find" button next to the External Tool URL box to select the "Perusall" from the list of possible tools.
  1. When done, click the "Save & Publish" or "Save" button to create your Canvas assignment that is now connected to the Perusall assignment.

Additional Resources:

For more help, please contact [email protected].

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