Perusall is a powerful tool with lots of features. Students can work individually, in groups, or as a class to study, annotate and discuss docs and other media. You can also use Perusall to create assignments around annotations. While you can evaluate those assignments yourself, you can also have Perusall provide students with automatic, AI-enhanced feedback.
We linked Perusall to Moodle in Fall 2020. Through this link, you can have students work within the Perusall system, but pass grades back to Moodle. However, to have everything work correctly, you need to pay careful attention to a few details.
An important word about copyright
Although there is no cost to use Perusall and integrate it into your Moodle course, there may be costs for materials posted on that site. Perusall has licensing contracts with many content providers, and you may need to license copyrighted materials for use on Perusall. Please check Perusall’s web page, What textbooks can I use with Perusall? Can I also use my own documents?, for up-to-date information about their licensing policy.
Currently, our bookstore is working with Perusall to make some of the texts they sell also available for markup in Perusall. All going well, this will be in place for Fall 2021.
Please check with your subject librarian or the bookstore for more information.
Add Perusall to Moodle
- Turn editing on for your course
- Click the Add an activity or resource link.
- Select the Perusall activity and click Add.
- You will now see an options screen for the Perusall activity. Naming your activity. If this is a link to a specific assignment, follow the instructions below to name the activity with the same name you used in Perusall. Scroll to the bottom and click the button marked Save and display.
You should now be in Perusall, where you can set up your course materials and assignments.
Set up Perusall with your readings and assignments
Perusall is a very powerful tool. See Perusall Instructor Help to learn about the tool and how to set it up for your class.
This Unofficial Introdution to Perusall video from Dawson College is also great resource showing how to set the system up. Although the video shows use of Perusall within a Canvas LMS, we strongly recommend watching to get a good understanding of how you can use Perusall in your Moodle course.
Pass grades back to Moodle correctly, and other tips
We have talked with several professors that have used Perusall in their courses. Below are some of the suggestions they gave for using Perusall effectively.
If you are grading Perusall assignments…
Name your LMS link to match the Perusall assignment name
Create a new Perusall link for each assignment you want to grade, using the instructions from the Add Perusall to your course section above. Use the option in Perusall to “Copy full title to LMS“
Then tell your students that they need to use the link in your Moodle course to access that assignment. Accessing the assignment in other ways will not pass the grade back to Moodle.
Change the number of default comments that students need to create
By default, Perusall asks students to create seven comments. That’s alot. We suggest changing the default to 3 to 5 comments. Note, you can set the number of comments needed within the Scoring settings for each assignment too.
If you are using the same group throughout your course term…
Select the option to manually assign students in groups in the Perusall Course settings.
Learn More
Perusall has a lot of great documentation for instructors and for students.
