How do I use Perusall with parent/child LMS courses?

Overview

Many Learning Management Systems (LMSs) offer a "parent-child" course template, where one course acts as a "parent" (sometimes called a "shell" or "master" course), and then updates can be sent to the "child" courses. Since Perusall doesn't have access to the relationships between courses in your LMS, Perusall sees each child course as a separate unrelated course. This page describes how to utilize Perusall with such courses to make it easy to share materials in Perusall between the child courses.

Setup

1. Install/enable Perusall in your LMS "parent" course, and then launch Perusall to make a new blank Perusall course that is linked to the LMS "parent" course. (Learn more about our LMS integrations.)

   Optionally, you can navigate to Settings > General to add "parent" or "template" to the Course name, and/or enable This is a test or demonstration course to help easily identify this course.

2. Navigate to Settings > Access, and take note of your Copy code.
   
   
   
   
3. After you've built your Perusall course content, return to your LMS parent course, and build your Perusall assignment links.  (See LTI 1.1 Integration or LTI 1.3 Integration for link setup instructions.)
4. When ready, push your LMS course content (including Perusall links) from your LMS "parent" course into the LMS "child" courses.
5. Install/enable Perusall in each "child" course, and launch Perusall to make a new blank Perusall course that is linked to each LMS "child" course.
6. When creating the Perusall "child" course, you will be prompted to set up your course.  In Get Started > Step 1: Welcome, select Copy Existing Course.
   • Within the pop-up, select Another instructor's course, using a copy code.
   • Insert the Perusall "parent" course's copy code, and select the Content to copy, followed by the Assignments to copy.
   • Scroll down, and you can adjust assignment deadlines, or you can manage all dates later by clicking Edit Deadline on your Perusall course homepage.
   • If there are any instructor comments to copy from the "parent" course, they also can be copied there. (No student data/work is copied between courses.)
   • You will most likely want to also enable Copy Course Settings.
   • Click OK.

     If you've already completed the Get started steps in the child course, you can copy materials by navigating to Library > Add Content > Materials from Another course.

This will copy all of your content and assignments into the Perusall "child" course.  Repeat this process for each "child" course.  You can test that Perusall links in the LMS "child" course are working by clicking on them, and verifying that they take you into the proper assignment in the child Perusall course.

If you make updates to the Perusall "parent" course after the Perusall "child" courses have been copied, instructors of Perusall "child" courses can re-enter the same course copy code to update their Perusall course content and assignments.  To avoid duplicating assignments, when they navigate to navigate to Library > Add Content > Materials from Another course, rather than clicking Select all for Content and Assignments, they can click Select none, and use the white check boxes (to the left of each item) to select the which new items to copy.

For general grade sync issues, please refer to troubleshooting LTI 1.1 integrations & troubleshooting LTI 1.3 integrations.