What is Perusall?
Perusall is a 3rd party online social reading and annotation tool. Instructors and students can highlight elements from the text for commenting and engage in threaded discussions with their peers. They can tag and "upvote" each others' comments. Perusall is integrated with Canvas at Ithaca College. Students and faculty login to Perusall through Canvas.
How does Perusall work?
Instructors can upload PDF files, Word documents, ePub book files, source code files, web pages or publisher content. Students can read the materials, take private notes and collectively annotate and discuss the text with comments, questions, analysis and responses. There is an optional assignment mode so instructors can assign readings and track engagement.
What are the benefits of Perusall?
A growing body of research on social annotation tools has demonstrated multiple benefits of collaborative annotation tools, including increased student participation, motivation, and improvements in material comprehension and analysis. Instructors can easily address questions about the reading and view analytics to help with assessment and feedback. See some Perusall Research articles. https://www.perusall.com/research-academic-publications-list
Is there a cost to Perusall?
As of January 2025, Perusall is committed to providing access at no cost. However, their business model encourages instructors to purchase publisher content through their platform or asking students to pay a small license fee. You may opt out of that when setting up Perusall for your course. At this time, Ithaca College does not have a campus license to Perusall but it is integrated into Canvas. See https://www.perusall.com/pricing for a summary of these options.