About LTI
Perusall uses LTI to integrate with Learning Management Systems (LMSs). Once you have set up Perusall as an LTI app inside your LMS, students will be able to launch Perusall through their LMS without having to log into Perusall separately. (Important: If you integrate Perusall with your LMS, direct students to only log into Perusall through the LMS. If they log in to Perusall directly (i.e., at perusall.com), then they will be seen as a second user.)
IMS certification
Perusall is certified as LTI-compliant for LTI 1.0, LTI 1.1, and LTI Outcomes by IMS Global.
Configuring an LTI app in your LMS
Once configured, instructors will be able to create Perusall courses through the LMS. To set up Perusall manually as an LTI tool in your LMS, then the LTI launch URL to use is https://app.perusall.com/lti/launch. If your LMS has the ability to automatically configure an LTI tool using XML, then you can instead provide your LMS with the LTI configuration URL https://perusall.com/downloads/lti-config.xml.
Either way, you will also need to provide your LMS with a consumer key and a shared secret, both of which are specific to your institution. Contact Perusall Support from your official university email address to retrieve your institution's key and secret. To allow us to provide you the credentials as quickly as possible:
- Put "Key and secret request" in the subject line of your email.
- For security verification purposes, provide a link to an institutional web page that shows your name, email address, and title/affiliation.
The instructions for setting up your LMS differs by LMS, and may require administrator access
Student roster sync
Upon setting up a new course in Perusall through your LMS, the roster in Perusall will be empty even if your LMS roster is not. This is normal; your student roster in Perusall will automatically populate as students each launch into Perusall from the LMS for the first time.
Setting up gradebook sync
Some LMSs support gradebook sync between Perusall and the LMS. To do this, set up Perusall as an assignment in the LMS. (For example, Canvas calls this an "external tool" type of assignment.) Give the assignment in the LMS the same name as the assignment in Perusall; there is an option on the dropdown menu for each assignment in Perusall (called “copy full title to LMS”) that will copy the assignment name to the clipboard so you can paste it into your LMS. Then students can launch directly into that assignment inside Perusall from the LMS. Once you release the grades for a particular assignment, Perusall will send the grades for that assignment back to the LMS gradebook. Any subsequent changes you make to your course in Perusall that would affect the scores on that assignment (e.g., changing the lateness penalty) will also sync back to your LMS so the LMS gradebook and Perusall gradebook are always in sync.
Grades are synced to the LMS about once an hour, so it may take an hour or two for a grade update to be reflected in the LMS.
Due to the way LTI works, grades are sent to the LMS as a percentage, rather than as a raw score. The LMS will then apply that percentage to the assignment based on the number of points you have set for that assignment in the LMS. For example, if your lowest possible assignment score is 0 and highest possible assignment score in Perusall is 5, and the assignment is set in the LMS to be worth 10 points, a score of 4 will be sent across to the LMS as 80% and will show up in the LMS as 8/10. For this reason, we recommend that you set up assignments in your LMS to be worth the same number of points as it is worth in Perusall.
Troubleshooting
See our general LMS troubleshooting page for common issues.