About
Perusall is created to establish collaboration skills, critical thinking, and engagement with instructional materials. Instructors can demonstrate various teaching strategies to get the most out of Perusall's platform for students.
Depending on the instructor's annotation requirements, the scoring mechanism fluctuates. Make sure the students know the criteria to understand how they are awarded points.
The main function of Perusall is annotation. There is an engagement scoring method that is built into the app that provides the following metrics:
- Number of times an assignment was opened
- How much of the document was viewed
- Time spend actively engaging with content (commenting, replying, reading)
- Number of responses to peer's annotations
- Student upvote number
Instructors should keep in mind that in Perusall you can:
- Encourage learning from the annotations involving discussions that incorporate the assignment for social engagement.
- Provide asynchronous in-class discussions for online courses.
- Gauge student's comprehension and the effectiveness of the content.
3 Helpful Annotation Tips
In the Library tab, overview the "Add content" section. On the right side of the page, the various options will display of the content type you'd like to upload for your assignments. They will be utilized in Perusall with annotative features.
The 3 following options are other ways that Annotations can be integrated into the Perusall course:
A skill that could be new to students. Provide guidance to explain to the students on how to create an annotation. Demonstrate by using examples or suggestions:
- Highlight important topics in the assignment and have the students discuss among themselves.
- Encourage a connection between the Perusall assignment and course content to expand their critical thinking skills.
Ask the students to annotate pre-recorded lectures or lecture notes to address concerns as needed. This could help facilitate information and comprehension.
Students could ask questions about the course objective, goals, and criteria. This will help the instructor understand the student's individual needs and the class as a whole.
In the conversation bubbles to the right of the page, encourage the students to select a conversation to engage with and reply to a response.
Optimize Peer Review for students by:
- Encouraging peer responses.
- Demonstrating examples on how to give in-depth commentary to facilitate critical thinking skills.
Appoint an assignment for the students in the Library tab, then supervise all the conversations by selecting the "2 bubble conversation icons" on the right to ensure they are collaborating together.
The Jigsaw method is where a group of students can chose their own group (or get appointed from prior approval of the instructor) to a Perusall reading for discussion and collaborate in a unique way. Working together on specific tasks to promote engagement and cooperation.
Perusall Resource
Perusall offers a dedicated guide packed with strategies to boost student engagement. You can check out their Tips for encouraging student use page for more ideas.
You are done. Great job!