Getting started for instructors

Create your account 

There are two ways to create a course, which determine how you should set up your account:

1. Learning Management System (LMS) integrated course: 
   An LMS-integrated course is created and accessed through your school's LMS (e.g., Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, Moodle, etc). 
   • Refer to our setup documentation for installation instructions. 
   • Once installed, launch into Perusall. This will create your account and connect to your new Perusall course. 
   • Follow the Get Started steps to complete your course setup. 
2. Standalone course: 
   A standalone course is created and accessed directly at perusall.com. To create a standalone course:
   • Create your Perusall account.
   • Follow the Get Started steps to set up your course.

To manage your profile settings: navigate to your icon on the top right corner of your screen, and select the dropdown menu.

Course set up

Our setup wizard will guide you through six steps to create your course. (Don’t worry—you can always adjust the settings later.)

• Choose to create a brand new course or copy an existing course. 
  
• Next, select the option that best fits your course materials: 
  • Adopt a book: Search for and add a textbook from Perusall's catalog of over 1 million titles. Students can either purchase directly within the Perusall course, and or you can create a book access code order through the bookstore. If you prefer not to add a book, skip this step. You can also upload your own materials to the course Library after course set up. 

  • Choose a course access fee: If your school does not have a license and you are not using a book from our catalog (e.g., you are only assigning uploaded PDFs, free web articles, open-educational resources, or videos), select this option to set a one-time access fee for students to use the platform. 
    

    To learn more about the platform's pricing and student cost options, see this article on Course Choice.

• Configure your basic course settings:
  
  • Department & Enrollment estimate: Select your department from the dropdown and enter the estimated number of students for the course.

  • Scoring and analytics: Choose how scoring and engagement analytics are integrated into your course. You can choose between full automatic grading, manual grading, or disabling analytics/grading entirely. 

    For more details on automatic grading, see:
    1. How scoring works  
    2. How do I use scoring templates?
    3. How do I use rubrics?

  • Comment evaluation language: Set the primary language you expect students to write their comments in so the automatic grading engine reviews them accurately.

  • Release scores to students: Decide when students can see their assignment scores (e.g., automatically when a deadline passes, or only after you manually release them in the Gradebook).

    If your course is integrated with your school's LMS, you will also see advanced options here for Grade sync and LMS gradebook column management. 

• Upload your syllabus to make it easily accessible in your course Library. Once, uploaded, you will have the option to Automatically extract course information from the syllabus. 
  
  
  
  When enabled, Perusall automatically reads your syllabus to fill in your course details (like learning objectives and student levels; to further adjust you can manage under Settings>Context).
  
  Lastly, select to add one of our pre-made Making the most of learning with Perusall assignments or  Create a syllabus review assignment to get students acquainted with the platform. 
• Decide whether and how you want students to be grouped. 
  
  • No grouping: All students in the course can see and reply to comments posted by everyone else.
  • Fixed grouping for all course material: Students are placed into permanent groups for the entire semester. They will only see comments from peers in their assigned group.
  • Assignment-based grouping: Groups are applied only to specific assignments. When students access content directly in the Library outside of an assignment, they will see everyone's comments.
  • Library content-based grouping: Groups are tied directly to specific materials within your course Library.
• Depending on how you created your course, the final step explains how to enroll students and provides tips for student use. 
  • For LMS integrated courses: At the top of the screen, you'll see how your course was created. Students must launch the external tool link to connect to your course, which will automatically create their account if they don’t already have one.
    
  • For standalone courses: You will need to share either the course enrollment code or the enrollment URL with your students. 
    

Perusall lets instructors customize courses to fit their needs. Go to Settings in the left sidebar to update course info. For details, see: How can I customize my course settings?

Managing the Library

The Library in Perusall is a centralized space where instructors can upload and organize course materials for students to engage with whether inside an assignment or directly from the Library tab. 

To access and manage your course materials:

1. Navigate to Course home.
2. Select Library on your course home page.
3. Click + Add Content and choose the type of content you’d like to add, including a book from our catalog.

Related articles: 

• How do I manage my course content? What materials can I use? 
• How do I adopt a textbook using Perusall?
• What are folders?

Creating assignments

The Assignments tab in Perusall is where instructors create and organize assignments based off the content from the Library. 

1. Navigate to Course home.
2. Select Assignments on your course home page.
3. Click + Add assignment and select the specific assignment type you want to create from the dropdown menu.

Related articles: 

• Learn more about managing assignments.
• How do I create a differentiated assignment?
• How do Review-Based Assignments work?
• How do my students make the most of social learning?

Viewing discussions and creating comments

Open a document in the Library tab or an assignment in the Assignments tab.

You'll see highlights superimposed on the document that represent comments that you and students have entered.

• Yellow highlights indicate comments or questions by students. 
• Blue highlights indicate general instructor comments.
• Green highlights indicate instructor-placed prompts or quiz questions that require student responses. These required prompts or questions are called Checkpoints. 

To highlight, click and drag your mouse using our annotate text tool or annotate figure tool. (how do I highlight and create, edit or delete a comment?). Once highlighted, a new conversation bubble will appear in the right-side panel. Enter a comment or question, and press Enter to save it. 

• Annotate text tool:
  
   
• Annotate figure tool:
  
   

The toolbar above the content screen and right-side panel provide many social annotation tools users can use to enhance their experience. To learn more, see below:

• What do all the icons mean? For instructors
• How do I filter my view of comments or highlights?
• How can I add comments or questions directed to students?

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