Initial Setup
To connect Perusall to Canvas, set up Perusall as an LTI app under Settings > Apps (search for Perusall in the App Center), and add your key and secret. If you do not see Perusall listed in your App Center, you can set it up manually:
- Select View App Configurations, and then click + App.
- Select "By URL" under Configuration Type.
- Enter https://perusall.com/downloads/lti-config.xml for the Config URL.
- Set Privacy to Public.
If you do not have a key and secret already, contact Perusall Support from your official university email address to retrieve your institution's key and secret. (For security verification purposes, provide Perusall Support with a link to an institutional web page that shows your name, email address, and title/affiliation.)
Refresh the Canvas page and finally, you can add a Perusall navigation link to your course sidebar under Settings > Navigation. Click on this link to launch Perusall and create a new course in Perusall that maps to your course in Canvas. Once you have done this, students can also click this link to launch into your Perusall course from Canvas.
Here's a video showing this process:
Setting up assignments
To enable grade sync, create assignments in Canvas that map to assignments in Perusall. For each reading assignment you create in Perusall, create a corresponding assignment in Canvas. Each assignment should be created as an External Tool assignment in Canvas, pointing to Perusall.
To link each assignment in Canvas to the proper assignment in Perusall, make sure that the name of the assignment in Canvas exactly matches the name of the assignment in Perusall. To retrieve the name of an assignment in Perusall (Perusall assigns names automatically when you have not explicitly given an assignment a name), select it in the Assignments panel on your course home page in Perusall, and then click the Copy full title for LMS button in the toolbar. The assignment name will be copied to the clipboard, and you can paste it into the assignment name field in Canvas.
To test that the assignment linkage works, launch the assignment in Canvas and ensure that you are taken to the correct assignment in Perusall -- you should bypass the course home page in Perusall when clicking on a Perusall assignment from Canvas.
Note: To ensure that grade sync works throughout the semester, make sure that students access each Perusall assignment by clicking through the corresponding assignment in Canvas. If a student accesses an assignment in Perusall without ever clicking through the corresponding Canvas assignment, then Perusall will not be able to send that student's score back to Canvas.
Here's a video showing this process:
Syncing Perusall groups with Canvas groups
If you would like to synchronize your Perusall groups with your Canvas groups, go to Settings > Grouping and then select Manually assign students to groups and enable the option Apply groups from Canvas. Then click Save changes.
If you already have students enrolled in the course, they will temporarily be placed in Group 1. Upon first launch of Perusall, Students will be placed in a group within Perusall matching their group within Canvas. Students not assigned to a group in Canvas will remain in Group 1 in Perusall. (If all of your students have been assigned to a group in Canvas, Group 1 will be empty once all students join the course in Perusall.)
To ensure this integration works as expected, make sure that:
- You have installed Perusall using the process above. If you set up Perusall in Canvas manually, make sure that the Custom Fields text box contains the following on a line by itself.
group_ids=$Canvas.group.contextIds - There is only one "group set" specified in Canvas.
Note that 1) every student in the course has to access Perusall (from Canvas) in order for the new groups in Perusall to show up properly. This is the case since Perusall must receive the new Grouping information from Canvas, which it does when a student launches into Perusall from Canvas. 2) The group numbers in Perusall will not necessarily correspond with the group numbers in Canvas, but students grouped together in Canvas will be grouped together in Perusall as well.
Troubleshooting
Canvas' Student View button will not work with Perusall, since Canvas doesn't send an email address to Perusall as part of that launch. To see what students will see once they launch into Perusall, utilize the Student View link on the left navigation bar within your Perusall course.
See our general LMS troubleshooting page for other common issues.