Utilizing Perusall for Educational Instruction: A Guide
Perusall is a groundbreaking digital annotation tool designed to transform the way students engage with class readings. Founded by Gary King, director of Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science, this innovative platform fosters active learning by turning reading assignments into collaborative social annotation activities [1].
With Perusall, students can directly comment, highlight, and discuss text within the reading material, creating a peer-to-peer dialogue in the context of the text itself, rather than in separate discussion forums [2]. This interactive and collaborative approach encourages students to delve deeper into the material, promoting a more engaging learning experience.
One of the key features of Perusall is its automatic student engagement analytics. These analytics track various metrics such as the quantity and quality of annotations, questions, and responses. Instructors can tailor these analytics to emphasize different aspects of engagement, helping them monitor and promote active participation [1]. Students are motivated to engage actively because their contributions are part of their grade, based on a rubric configured by the instructor.
Perusall integrates seamlessly with learning management systems like Canvas and Blackboard, making it easy to assign collaborative reading tasks and to leverage its analytic tools for insights into students’ interaction with the text. This integration supports active learning by incorporating social annotation into a structured course workflow [2][3].
In addition to fostering a more interactive, social, and reflective reading experience, Perusall offers a library of 1.2 million ebooks from 54,000 publishers, allowing instructors to assign a wide range of reading materials. Moreover, Perusall can serve as an alternative to discussion boards, reading responses, or reading quizzes, encouraging in-depth and specific student responses to the reading.
Instructors and departments can purchase course access for students, or students can purchase access to various books independently. Requiring students to comment on assigned reading ensures they arrive at class prepared for discussions, fostering student-instructor interaction. Using Perusall for student comments can replace reading quizzes, fostering a deeper connection with the reading.
For those instructors who use free materials, Perusall is available at no cost. Additionally, Perusall can link comments to grading, making it easy for instructors to track student reading and responses. To further aid in academic writing, QuillBot, a free tool that excels as a grammar and spellchecker, can be integrated with Perusall.
In conclusion, Perusall offers a unique and effective solution for increasing student engagement and supporting active learning. By providing a collaborative, interactive, and reflective reading experience, Perusall is set to revolutionise the way students approach class readings.
- The teacher can use Perusall, a digital annotation tool, to encourage student-to-student dialogue during reading assignments, fostering a more engaging and interactive learning experience.
- Instructors can benefit from Perusall's automatic student engagement analytics, which track annotations, questions, and responses, enabling them to monitor participation and promote active learning amongst students.
- Perusall can be integrated with learning management systems like Canvas and Blackboard, making it simpler to assign collaborative reading tasks and leverage the tool's analytic features for insights into students' interactions with various STEM subjects.
- By offering a wide library of ebooks and replacing traditional reading quizzes with student commentary, Perusall supports education and self-development by promoting in-depth and targeted student responses to learning materials.
