Why does Perusall have an audit feature?
Perusall’s Audit feature is a tool designed to provide instructors with insights around student engagement. Though Perusall automatically flags comments for a variety of reasons (outlined below), the Audit itself does not determine whether or not a student has violated your specific course policies. Instead, we suggest using the audit to make informed decisions based on trends.
Flagging comments
Perusall automatically identifies content that may require attention, such as:
- Comments that are exact duplicates of other comments
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Comments where content was pasted in
- This is triggered when a student pastes text into the comment box rather than typing it manually.
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Comments that may not be valid English
- Flags comments that do not appear to follow standard English linguistic patterns, which could point to gibberish or automated text generation.
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Comments that were entered quickly
- Flags comments submitted in a timeframe significantly faster than a typical person could type the number of characters present.
Manual flags
To manually flag a comment, click the three dots next to a comment and select the exclamation mark icon to report this as plagiarized or otherwise inappropriate.
When a student flags a comment, instructors receive an email notification containing the flagged content and a link to unflag it if necessary. You can also review and manage all flagged comments at any time through the Audit dashboard.
Auditing flagged comments
To review and efficiently manage all flagged content in one centralized location, navigate to the Audit button on the left sidebar. This dashboard displays a comprehensive list of flagged items with the following information:
- Student: The name of the student who posted the comment.
- Location: The specific document or assignment where the comment appears.
- Created: The date and time the comment was submitted.
- Comment Text: The comment that the flag is associated with.
- Issue: The specific reason or behavioral trigger that caused the flag.
- Details: Exactly what in the comment is triggering the flag.
- Status: The current state of the flag (e.g., pending review or ignored).
To quickly locate flags for a specific individual, use the search bar to filter the dashboard by student name.
To revisit comments that were previously dismissed, click the Issues marked as ignored button. This allows you to review and reconsider any audited comments you manually opted to ignore.
To the right of the Status column, click the three dots (more options menu), to take direct administrative action.
From here, you can ignore the flag, prevent the student from earning points for the comment, or assign a grade of 0 for the entire assignment.
Turnitin submission checker
Perusall courses built with an LMS integration have the ability to integrate with Turnitin. If configured by your institution, Perusall will check student comments and quiz essay responses for originality using your institution's subscription to Turnitin. For set up instructions, university admins can follow this setup page.
Instructors can see if their school has completed the Turnitin integration by navigating to Settings > Integrity. Depending on how your institution has set up the integration, you may have additional options you can set to customize the integration for your course.
When the integration is enabled for your course, students will be required to accept the Turnitin End User License Agreement upon enrolling in the course:
When Turnitin flags a student's assignment as similar to other published material, a small "T" icon will be displayed next to that student's score in the Perusall Gradebook.
To view the Turnitin Report, click on the score and then select the Turnitin similarity report tab. Perusall will provide a summary of the report, and you can click View report to open up the full report with details about what original sources are similar to the students' comments.
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