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How to Use Perusall with Canvas

How to Use Perusall with Canvas

What is Perusall?

Perusall is an e-reader and social annotation platform used to motivate and engage students with reading course materials. It is a system in which you can upload and share documents (or open educational resources [OER]) with your students for them to read online and comment and annotate together. For example, you might ask students to highlight passages they’d like to discuss further in class, or they can ask questions of each other while reading the text. Perusall also has additional paid features that integrate with and use certain textbooks with the platform.

How can I use Perusall with my Canvas course?

Perusall is configured globally for use with Canvas at the University of Pittsburgh. You do not need to add or install the integration; you only need to enable it.

Creating Perusall Account

You may need to create an account with Perusall. It does not go through Pitt Passport.

    • Go to the Perusall website and click the register link at the top of the page.
    • Use your email in the form of username@pitt.edu (such as ABC123@pitt.edu), and not any vanity aliases (like a.b.cetera@pitt.edu or abc123@school.pitt.edu).
    • Create a unique password for all sites. Please do not reuse your Pitt password for any other services, including Perusall.

Enabling integration

To turn on Perusall for your course:

  1. Enter your course in Canvas.
  2. Click Settings at the bottom of your course navigation menu.
  3. Switch to the Navigation tab.
  4. Find Perusall from the bottom list of integrations that are not enabled in your course.
  5. Click Options button - stacked three dots. next to it and choose Enable.
  6. Scroll to the bottom and click save.
    Screenshot showing how to add an integration in Canvas.

First Time Using

Click the link to Perusall from your course. The first time you enter Perusall, you will need to create your course. Answer the questions on the screen (such as the course dates) and click save. More information about Perusall course setup is available in their documentation. The same help page also tells how you to set up course preferences.

Student Enrollments

Unlike many other integrations, Perusall does not have a roster import. It will add students from your course to its roster as they click Perusall from your Canvas course. A good method to encourage students to enter Perusall so they’re in the system is to have a low stakes practice assignment. This will also help to acquaint the students with using Perusall.

Grade Sync and Creating Assignments

Grade Sync Options

Perusall has two methods for syncing grades to Canvas: Average Perusall grade, and individual assignment grades. We recommend syncing each individual assignment grade into Canvas through that method. This will make it easier for the students to keep track of all their grades in one place and it will give you more versatility in calculating your final scores. To set this:

  1. In Perusall,
  2. Click Settings.
  3. On the general tab,
  4. Set “Grade sync to LMS” to
  5. “Automatically sync students’ individual assignment scores back to the LMS”
    Screenshot illustrating Perusall setting change for LMS grade sync option.

Assignments

Perusall has made a video of this process. The video is embedded here, or you may read the text instructions that follow.

Perusall uses the assignment title and External Tool settings from a Canvas assignment to communicate grades back. After you have created your assignment in Perusall (and we suggest before you make it available to students and accept submissions there), you should create an assignment in Canvas with the same title. You can see the full details in the “Individual assignment grade sync” section of the Perusall Canvas documentation.

  1. Go to your assignment in Perusall
  2. Click Copy full title for LMS
  3. In Canvas, go to the assignments page
  4. Click +Assignment to create a new one
  5. Paste the copied title  as the assignment name
  6. Set the point value to agree wit Perusall (default is a range of 0-3 points)
  7. Choose submission type: External Tool
  8. Click Find
  9. In the Configure External Tool dialog, scroll the list to find and select Perusall
  10. Click select
  11. Check Load This Tool In A New Tab
  12. Save and publish your assignment

Important note: Perusall Grade sync may only work properly if your students access Perusall from the assignments page. You should make this clear in your directions to students. You may want to disable Perusall from your course navigation once it is set up (per Enabling above, but choose disable). This will reduce the chances that students access Perusall in a different way.

The details of managing your content and assignments in Perusall are beyond the scope of this document. Please refer to the Perusall Resources below.

Getting Help with Perusall

Perusall Resources

Perusall Success Stories at Pitt

Have you successfully used Perusall in your course at Pitt? Would you like to share your story with your colleagues? Please email us and we’ll see about collecting your story to share here!

Requesting a Consultation

The Educational Software Consulting team can meet with you to help you to set up, learn, and use Perusall. Request a consultation with us to ask more. Note: The University of Pittsburgh does not have a license agreement or contract with Perusall, so our support options may be limited in some situations. We will do our best to help you, but may need to refer you to Perusall support in certain cases.

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