For teachers to add Perusall to their Blackboard Ultra courses, the Blackboard Admininstrator must first allow Perusall's placement in courses. (Steps 1-4 are for the Blackboard Administrator).
Step 1
To connect Perusall to Blackboard Ultra, 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
- The Blackboard Administrator will go into the System Admin > LTI Tool Providers > Manage Global Properties
- For the field Creation of Tool Provider Links, select your preference.
- Select "Yes" to allow configured tool providers to post grades
- 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
- In Blackboard, click: System Admin > LTI Tool Providers > Register LTI 1.1 Provider
- Enter app.perusall.com in the provider domain field
- Choose Approved in the Provider Domain Status field
- Choose Set globally in the Default Configuration field
- Enter your institution’s Consumer Key in the Tool Provider Key field
- Enter your institution’s Shared Secret in the Tool Provider Secret field
- Choose Send user data only over SSL in the Send User Data field
- Check Role in Course, Name and Email Address in the User Fields to Send field
- Check Yes in the Allow Membership Service Access field
- Click Submit
Step 4
- In Blackboard, click: System Admin > LTI Tool Providers > dropdown menu next to app.perusall.com > Manage Placements > Create Placement
- Enter Perusall in the Label field
- Enter a Handle
- Choose Yes in the Availability field
- Choose Course content tool and check Allows grading in the Type field
- Enter https://app.perusall.com/lti/launch in the Tool Provider URL field
- Click Submit
Teachers are now able to add a Perusall link to their Blackboard course.
Step 5: For Teachers
- Enter your Blackboard course and click Content> click create
- Choose Teaching Tools with LTI Connection
- Enter Perusall (or anything) in the Name field > the configuration URL is https://app.perusall.com/lti/launch make the link visible to students
- Check off open new window, allow class conversations, and create grade book entry for this item
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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
Click the link you just created to launch Perusall and create a Blackboard Ultra-linked Perusall course. Students can also click this link to launch into your 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 Ultra 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> clickSettings>Scoring>Grade Sync to LMS> selectAutomatically Sync Students' Average Scores Back to the LMSand save changes
To sync students’ Individual Assignment Scores, you will create assignment specific links in Blackboard Ultra for every assignment in Perusall
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In Perusall, set the Grade sync to LMS field Settings > Scoring to Automatically sync students' individual assignment scores back to the LMS
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In Perusall, click: Course home > Assignments > select an assignment > 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 Ultra >click create>select Teaching Tools with LTI Connection
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Paste the assignment’s title into the Assignment name field.
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The Configuration URL is https://app.perusall.com/lti/launch make the link visible to students
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Check Off open new window, allow class conversations, and create grade book entry for this item
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Remove any due dates and enter the amount of points the assignments should be out of in the Points Possible field (make sure it matches the score range in Perusall under settings> scoring and press save
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Launch the link and it should take you directly into that assignment reading page.
Repeat this process for each Perusall assignment. Hide the generic Perusall link from the students’ view in Blackboard Ultra (so students only use the assignment-specific links, thereby ensuring grade sync works correctly) by clicking Content > the dropdown menu next to your generic Perusall link > 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, then Perusall will not be able to send the student's scores back to 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 > Perusall (from the Build Content 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.