For teachers to add Perusall to their Blackboard courses, the Blackboard Administrator must first allow Perusall's placement in courses. (Steps 1-4 are for the Blackboard Administrator).
Step 1
To connect Perusall to Blackboard, Contact support@perusall.com to obtain the institution’s Consumer Key & Shared Secret. Please email in 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.)
Step 2
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The Blackboard Administrator will go into the System Admin > LTI Tool Providers > Manage Global Properties
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On the Global Properties page, select "Yes" for the tool to be enabled in courses and enabled in organizations.
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For the field "Creation of Tool Provider Links", select your preference.
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Select "Yes" to allow configured tool providers to post grades
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Scroll down to Default Configuration and select to send user data only over SSL. For User Fields to Send, check off role in course, name, and email address. Finally, select "yes" to Allow Membership Service Access and press submit.
Step 3
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The Blackboard Administrator will go into the System Admin > LTI Tool Providers > Register LTI 1.1 Provider
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Enter app.perusall.com in the provider domain field
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Choose "approved" in the Provider Domain Status field
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Choose "set globally" in the Default Configuration field
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Enter your institution’s Consumer Key in the Tool Provider Key field
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Enter your institution’s Shared Secret in the Tool Provider Secret field
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Choose "send user data only over SSL" in the Send User Data field
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Check off role in course, name and email address in the User Fields to Send field
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Click Submit
Step 4
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The Blackboard Administrator will go into the System Admin > LTI Tool Providers > scroll down app.perusall.com and click on the dropdown menu >then select Manage Placements > Create Placement
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Enter "Perusall" in the Label field
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Enter a Handle
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Choose "yes" in the Availability field
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Choose Course content tool and check off Allows grading in the Type field
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Enter https://app.perusall.com/lti/launch in the Tool Provider URL field
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Click Submit
Teachers are now able to add a Perusall link to their Blackboard course.
Step 5: For Teachers
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Enter your Blackboard course and click content on the left side navigation bar
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Select Build Content and in the dropdown menu select the Perusall tool
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Enter Perusall (or anything) in the Name field
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Choose "yes" in the Enable Evaluation field
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Enter the amount Points your want your Perusall assignments to be out of in the Point Possible field. You will need to adjust your assignment score range inside of Perusall as well under settings>scoring
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Choose "yes" in the Permit Users to View this Content field
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Click Submit
Click the link to launch Perusall. This will create your course and you can now build your materials inside of the platform. Students will also click this link to launch into the Perusall course.
Grade Sync
You can sync students' average assignment scores or students’ individual assignment scores back to Blackboard.
Syncing the average score rather than individual assignment scores saves time because an instructor will only need to create one Perusall link in a Blackboard content area rather than a specific assignment link for each assignment. Students will access Perusall through this link.
To enable average grade sync, launch into your Perusall course> click Settings > Scoring> Grade Sync to LMS > select Automatically Sync Students' Average Scores Back to the LMS and save changes
To enable individual assignment grade sync, you will create assignment specific links in a Blackboard content area for every assignment you created in Perusall
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Launch into your Perusall course> click Settings > Scoring> Grade Sync to LMS and select automatically sync students' individual assignment scores back to the LMS
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Next, select course home > Assignments > and select an assignment you would like to sync back to Blackboard > click copy full title for LMS. The assignment name will be copied to the clipboard
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Go to a content area in Blackboard >click build content>select Perusall
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Paste the assignment’s title into the assignment name field.
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Choose "yes" in the Enable Evaluation field
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Enter the amount Points your want your Perusall assignments to be out of in the Point Possible field. You will need to adjust your assignment score range inside of Perusall as well under settings>scoring
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Choose "yes" in the Permit Users to View this Content field and click submit
Repeat this process for each Perusall assignment. Hide the generic Perusall link from the students’ view in Blackboard (so students only use the assignment-specific links, thereby ensuring grade sync works correctly) by going to your content area with the generic Perusall link and selecting the dropdown menu next the button > click Edit > Make unavailable.
Note
In order to successfully sync individual assignment scores, students must access each Perusall assignment by clicking its assignment specific link in Blackboard. If a student does not, there will be a red mark next to the students' grade in the Perusall gradebook symbolizing that Perusall is not able to send the student's scores back to the Blackboard.
Troubleshooting
If you use a Learning Module, Blackboard will attempt to open Perusall within an iframe. However, as a security measure, Perusall prevents itself from being "framed" within another app, so if you try to launch Perusall from a Learning Module you will get a message indicating that the browser couldn't launch Perusall. To fix this, we suggest avoiding the use of Learning Modules; instead, use folders to organize your Perusall links in the Blackboard course.
Links on the left-hand navigation pane in Blackboard won't work with Perusall as they cannot point to tool providers. Instead, click Content > Build Content> and select Perusall from the dropdown menu to create a Perusall link in the main content area of Blackboard.
On July 28, 2017, Blackboard issued an advisory that some LTI tools may not work correctly in Safari. If your institution uses an older version of Blackboard (prior to the Q2 2018 release), we suggest avoiding use of Safari when accessing Perusall through Blackboard.
See our general LMS troubleshooting page for other common issues.