Perusall
Intro
Perusall is a social annotation tool that makes reading and learning assignments more collaborative experiences. Integrated with both Blackboard and Canvas, Perusall allows students to annotate texts, webpages, and videos, respond to peers, and engage in meaningful discussions directly within learning materials.
Instructors can also add questions and checkpoints throughout readings or videos to prompt reflection, check understanding, and encourage active participation. With features such as peer review and fishbowl activities, Perusall supports a variety of collaborative learning approaches that can help increase student engagement and interaction.
Why Perusall?
Students can engage more deeply by interacting with peers directly within the learning materials. It helps to encourage students to complete a reading or watch a video, think about topics more deeply, and build a stronger sense of community.
Common Academic Scenarios:
- Priming for Class Discussions: Instructors can review students’ comments and questions before class to tailor lectures directly to what students found most interesting or confusing.
- Decoding Complex Literature: Ideal for guiding students through difficult or lengthy scholarly journal articles, primary historical sources, or dense textbooks as a collective study group.
- Media & Video Analysis: Allow students to time-stamp, annotate, and discuss specific moments in video lectures, audio clips, or web pages.
links to perusall
more info
AVAILABLE TO: Faculty | Students | Staff
FUNDING: University (Premium License)
Getting started
Left- For Instructors
Right - For Students
Student Set-up Guide
Tutorials
Left- Instructor Resources
Instructor Resources
- Problem-solving guide for instructors
- Canvas integration features: full implementation guide
- How does Perusall use AI?
Course setup and management
- Getting started for instructors
- How can I customize my course settings?
- How do I add learning objectives to my Perusall course?
- How to copy and reuse courses on Perusall
- How do I collaborate with other instructors and teaching assistants?
- What is Student View in Perusall and how do I use it?
- How do groups work?
- What instructions can I provide to students?
- How does Perusall help promote academic integrity in my course?
Course Materials
- How do I adopt a textbook using Perusall?
- How do I use scanned documents in Perusall?
- How do I use videos in Perusall?
- How do I use podcasts or audio assignments in Perusall?
- How do I use Boclips with my OpenStax material?
- Accessibility for uploaded content
- What kind of analytics are available to help understand student engagement and understanding?
- How do quizzes work?
Assignments
- How do my students make the most of social learning?
- How do I create and manage assignments?
- How do Review-Based assignments work?
- How do I create a peer review assignment?
- How do I create a fishbowl assignment?
- How do I create a differentiated assignment?
- How do I set up peer review with groups?
Scoring and Grading
Right - Student Resouces
Student Resouces
Getting started
Assignments
UIC-Specific Resources
Left - QG, KB, Newsletter
FAQ
How do review-based assignments work in Perusall?
Perusall offers three types of review-based assignments to facilitate peer learning and structured feedback using rubrics and/or in-text feedback:
I have a large class and so there ends up being too many annotations.
You can break classes into smaller discussion groups. You can easily create groups by going to settings > grouping in the left menu.
Students are copying each other’s responses.
Hide replies until students post, giving them space to form an original response before they are swayed by their peers’ responses.
Students are skimming through the material and aren’t stopping to think.
Place checkpoints before key concepts such as required prompts or quiz questions. Then ask students to revisit their thinking afterward. Checkpoints are created by adding due dates linked to specific page ranges or sections within an assignment.
Privacy and Accessibility
Left
Privacy
- Check out Perusall’s Trust Center
- Perusall Privacy Policy (Last updated by Perusall April 28, 2025)
Right
Accessibility
Perusall offers accessibility features that leverage to increase accessibility of reading materials and assignments for everyone, creating an inclusive, welcoming environment for learning. The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (version 2.4, last updated June 28, 2024) provides detailed information on Perusall’s support for accessibility standards. For detailed information on Perusall’s accessibility features, please visit Perusall’s Accessibility statement.
Accessibility Features
Quote
One of the things I would really like from Perusall is stopping points, especially with more difficult readings… it can be just agree or disagree for the paragraph, or a multiple-choice question… a kind of reading comprehension….it gives students a feeling of needing to turn the page.
Vincent Adiutori, Honors College