You can add comments or questions just like students—yours will appear in blue (student comments are yellow) so they’re easy to spot.
You can reply to student questions and comments—your responses will appear alongside theirs. Some instructors choose not to join student discussions, as it can sometimes limit open conversation, but this depends on your students and teaching style.
Staged Threads
Instructors can create Staged Threads, which require students to reply before they can see others' responses. This encourages independent thinking before engaging with peers.
To create a staged thread:
- Click the puzzle piece below any comment posted by an instructor (except for comments posted in reply to another comment).
- Once a thread is marked as staged, students will only see the instructor prompt until they respond.
- Once they respond they'll see all other replies by students in their group, and can continue the discussion with their classmates as normal.
Using generative AI to generate discussion prompts
Instructors can use generative AI to suggest discussion prompts that you can pose for students to respond to. Perusall will never post anything automatically; rather, it will suggest a question that you can review, edit, or discard prior to it being posted for students to see.
To remove this feature from your course, go to Settings > Advanced > Commenting > check the box Hide instructor option to use AI to generate suggested discussion prompts".
To generate a discussion prompt, highlight some text that you want students to discuss. (To give the AI model adequate context, highlight at least a full sentence or two.) In the conversation panel on the right, underneath the comment box, click Suggest a discussion prompt.
The AI model runs completely within Perusall's secure, private infrastructure.
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