Tips for encouraging student use

Be clear with your students about why they are using Perusall

Gaining student buy-in is easier when they understand the purpose behind using Perusall. Clearly explain how the platform supports key course learning outcomes, such as:

• Developing critical thinking skills
• Engaging with peers
• Building metacognition

Communicate these benefits in multiple places, such as:

• Your syllabus
• The course welcome module
• A welcome message on the Perusall course homepage
• Your first synchronous meeting

Demonstrate features you want students to use

Outline your specific goals for using Perusall to determine which features you would like students to use the most. Perusall offers many tools for interactive learning, but focusing on the essentials will help students succeed.

Encourage students to explore Perusall’s features by providing resources like:

• Perusall’s student support pages
• Perusall's student webpage

This gives students hands-on experience with tools like commenting, highlighting, and interacting with peers in a way that aligns with your course objectives.

• Do you want to promote student-student interaction? Teach students to use the @name, @conversation, and @everyone features to ensure they’re talking to each other. Students (and instructors!) will be notified by email and in the app whenever they @mention each other.
  
  
• Interested in fostering intertextual connections or identifying consistent themes or terms across the semester? Consider establishing and encouraging students to establish #hashtags. Students (and instructors!) can see in one place all comments that have a particular #hashtag.
  
  
• Students can upvote each others’ comments and questions to indicate that they found a particular comment helpful, or that they have the same question. If students will be graded on their use of upvoting, be sure to have them practice using that feature. Students can also flag a comment of theirs as a question if Perusall doesn’t automatically detect it as such.
  
  

Provide practice

Step 1: Assign a Practice Activity

To help students get comfortable with Perusall, start with a low-stakes practice activity that introduces both the platform and course content.

Option 1: Use Perusall's built-in activity

• Add the Making the Most of Perusall guide from the Library. This interactive resource is tailored for STEM, humanities, and social science courses and helps students develop effective social learning strategies.

Option 2: Use your syllabus

• Assign your course syllabus to help students practice using Perusall while engaging with key course information. Bonus: Their questions and comments may provide valuable feedback on your syllabus! You can upload your syllabus, when you create your course, in Get Started > Step 2: Starter Assignments, or navigate to the course Library.

Step 2: Follow Up

After the practice activity, check in with students to address any questions or concerns:

• Host a discussion during a live session.
• Use an open chat, like the General Discussion group in Perusall, to clarify issues.
• These follow-ups help students feel confident with the platform and encourage active participation.

Be present (or not)

Depending on your course goals, you may want to help students get excited about participating in discussion by demonstrating your presence in the course.

Here are a few ways you can spark discussion within Perusall:

• Upvote helpful or insightful student comments
• Use @Name, @Conversation, and @Everyone to draw student attention to your response
• Star comments to easily return to them in class or in a weekly video
• Create your own highlights with instructor-driven prompts to get students to focus on specific pieces of the content

However, you may opt to not be present at all. By allowing Perusall to be a student-led resource, students can feel confident answering each other’s questions without worrying they will give the “wrong” answers. Students often find they enjoy interacting with each other on the platform. The more comfortable students feel expressing their thoughts and opinions, the better—so as to spark discussion and drive students towards deeper thinking and understanding.

Lean on us!