Create Perusall Annotation Assignments in Canvas

Enabling Persuall in your Canvas course

To start using Perusall in your course, contact Instructional Design and Technology, with the course name and Course Number for the course in which you intend to use Perusall. 

Please note: While IDT makes every attempt to complete these requests as quickly as possible, it may still take up to 2 weeks to enable Perusall in your course. IDT appreciates your patience! 

Creating the Persuall Course Connection

  1. In the Left-side navigation in the course Click Perusall 1.3; Persuall will open in a new tab for you to begin creating the course connection
  2. Select Start with empty Course
  3. You will not need to select a book from the selection, Click Continue to add your own documents to the Persuall course

Perusall course creation Step 1

  1. Perusall will ask you about adding a student fee for the course, or if you will be paying - Neither you, nor your students are required to pay for Perusall
    1. Select $0 in the dollar amount options
    2. Scroll to the additional options and select
      "None of these make sense for me right now" 
    3. Click Continue
    4. Select a reason for choosing not to add the access fee
      (Recommended: "I don't want to charge my students an access fee")
  2. Tell Perusall about your course
    1. Select the closest department ot your Course's department
    2. Select start and end dates
    3. You can choose to either manually grade, or automatically grade assignments
    4. Set the grade to sync automatically to the Canvas
    5. Ensure that Perusall does not create a gradebook column in the LMS for each Perusall assignment 
  3. Click Continue

Add Content to the Perusall Library

  1. Click Library at the top
  2. In the Add content section, select the type of content, e.g., Document (PDF, Word, PowerPoint) or select the + Add content button. For example, Document > Upload from my device
  3. Then select your file 
  4. Edit the Library item Settings using the Edit cogwheel 
    1. Change the Title (typically to the title of the Document, not necessarily the name it was Saved under)
    2. Add any other identifying details for the ease of citation or description within Perusall

Note: Materials from another course is used to copy content from a previous course (semester) 

Create a Perusall assignment

  1. Click Assignments from the top menu
  2. Click the + Add assignment button at the top
  3. Select Standard Assignment, unless utilizing differentiated learning paths in your assignments

Starting a new assignment with a Standard Assignment

  1. In the Window that appears:
    1. Create an Assignment name
      (the one you will use in Canvas as well)
    2. Select a Submission Deadline 
  2. Click Next Step
  3. In the Dropdown menu select the content you are assigning
    1. Select Assign all content, or assign a range
      Note: if your document does not have a table of contents, you will not be able to use the Assign a range option
  4. Click Next Step
  5. Options Settings
    1. Describe the Assignment for your students.
      Be sure to include the number of required replies or comments, how much reading there is, any goals you might have, are there additional assessments on this reading, etc. 
    2. Do not set  a Visible to Students starting on date, you can control this in Canvas to ease confusing between applications
    3. Set Assign to Entire Class unless utilizing specific Perusall Groups for reading discussions
    4. Choose whether your students are Allowed to Post Anonymously
      Anonymity only applies to students, the instructor will still see student identities even if it was posted anonymously
  6. Click Next step
  7. Choose Specify custom scoring settings for this assignment or select Use course scoring settings (if you have set course scoring setting)
    1. In the General options section
      1. Set the highest possible points
        Be sure it's the same number of points your Canvas Assignment requires!
    2. Scroll down to the Automatic scoring criteria section
      1. In the Comment content section (60%), click on the Options arrow, set the number of Quality Comments you would like students to make (default is 4)
      2. In the Upvoting section, set the number of upvotes they can give their classmates and still receive credit
      3. Quizzes could be set to 0%. Remember that scoring totals are higher than 100% because students can receive credit in multiple ways.
  8. Click OK button 

The Perusall assignment has now been created. Navigate back to Canvas.

Create a Canvas assignment with Perusall External Tool

  1. Create a + New Assignment in Canvas
  2. Enter the Assignment Name
    (Recommended: Copy-paste the assignment name from Perusall to avoid any broken links or issues with the Perusall connection) 
  3. Enter the number of points possibleConfigure External Tool Perusall 1.3 selected
  4. Submission Type drop-menu: select External Tool
    1. Click Find
    2. Scroll to find Perusall 1.3 
  5. In the Window that appears Select the Assignment that was just created
    1. Select Import Assignment instructions into LMS
    2. Ensure Import grading information into LMS is selected
    3. Click Link to this Assignment
  6. Click Select
  7. Set the Due Date
    1. Click Manage Due Dates and Assign To
    2. Assign to Everyone unless utilizing groups or differentiated learning
    3. Select Due Date
    4. Optional: Set Available From and Until dates
  8. Click Save or Save & Publish button

If you Click Launch Perusall you'll be taken to the course assignment.

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