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Moodle setup

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Initial Setup

Connect Perusall and Moodle by adding Perusall as an external tool in Moodle. You will need your institution’s Consumer Key and Shared Secret, which you can obtain by contacting Perusall Support from your official university email address using the subject line “Key and Secret Request”. (For security verification purposes, please provide a link to an institutional web page that shows your name, email address, and title/affiliation.)

 

Installation: 

  1. In Moodle, click: Site administration > Plugins > External tool > Manage tools > configure a tool manually
  2. Enter “Perusall” in the tool name field
  3. Enter “https://app.perusall.com/lti/launch” in the Tool URL field 
  4. Enter “The Perusall social learning platform” in the Tool description field
  5. Choose LTI 1.0/1.1 from the LTI Version dropdown menu
  6. Enter your institution’s Consumer Key and Shared Secret 
  7. Choose “show as preconfigured tool when adding an external tool” from the Tool configuration usage dropdown menu
  8. Choose “New window” from the Default launch container dropdown menu
  9. In the Privacy section, select Always for each field (Share launcher’s name with tool, Share launcher’s email with tool, and Accept grades from the tool)
  10.  Check the box next to Force SSL

Then, add a Perusall link to your Moodle course:

  1. Enter your Moodle course
  2. Click Turn editing on > +Add an activity or resource > External tool  
  3. Enter Perusall (or anything) in the Activity name field
  4. Select Perusall from the Preconfigured tool dropdown menu
  5. Click Grade and then set the Maximum grade to 3.
  6. Click Save and display

Click Open in a new window to launch Perusall and create a Moodle-linked Perusall course. Students can also click this link to launch into your Perusall course.

 

Here's a video showing this process:

Grade Sync

You can sync students' average assignment scores or students’ individual assignment scores  back to Moodle.

 

Average grade sync: 

A student’s average score is each individual assignment score summed and then divided by the total number of assignments. 

Syncing average rather than individual assignment scores saves time on the front and back end of grade sync. On the front end, instructors only create a single link in Moodle rather than links for each Perusall assignment. On the back end, students only click a single link to enter Perusall and sync their grades, rather than individual links for each assignment.

 

To sync students’ average assignment scores:

  1. In Perusall, set the Grade sync to LMS field (Settings > General) to Automatically sync students' average scores back to the LMS. 
  2. In Moodle, Click Edit in your Perusall link’s row and then click Edit Settings > Grade. Ensure the number in the Maximum Grade field matches the high end of the Assignment score range of your Perusall course (which is by default 0-3 and found in Settings > Advanced).

Students will click the Perusall link you created to access their Perusall assignments and Perusall will pass their average scores back to Moodle as you release assignment scores in Perusall.

 

Individual assignment grade sync:

To sync students’ individual assignment scores, create Perusall assignment links in Moodle whose names match your Perusall assignments.

 

To sync students’ individual assignment scores:

  1. In Perusall, set the Grade sync to LMS field (Settings > General) to Automatically sync students' individual assignment scores back to the LMS
  2. In Perusall, click: Course home > Assignments > select an assignment > Copy full title for LMS. The assignment name will be copied to the clipboard
  3. In Moodle, click: Turn editing on > +Add an activity or resource > External tool
  4. Paste the assignment’s title in the Activity name field
  5. Select Perusall from the Preconfigured tool dropdown menu
  6. Click Grade and then set the Maximum grade to match the high end of the Assignment score range of your Perusall course (which is by default 0-3 and found in Settings > Advanced).
  7. Click: Save and display. Test the assignment-specific link you just created by clicking Open in a new window. You should launch directly into its corresponding assignment in Perusall. 

 

Repeat this process for each Perusall assignment. Hide the generic Perusall link from the students’ view in Moodle (so students only use the assignment-specific links, thereby ensuring grade sync works correctly) by clicking Edit in the generic Perusall link’s row and then Hide.


Note: In order to successfully sync individual assignment scores, students must access each Perusall assignment by clicking its assignment-specific link in Moodle. If a student does not, then Perusall will not be able to send the student's scores back to Moodle.

 

See our general LMS troubleshooting page for other common issues.



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