Quickstart Guide to

Perusall is a collaborative e-book reader developed at Harvard University that allows instructors to
upload reading materials, such as PDFs, for groups of people to read and annotate collectively. Accessed
through Blackboard, students are automatically added to the group and grading done by the instructor
in Perusall can be sent back to the course gradebook.

Adding the Perusall to your course

1. Access your course.
2. Under the Details & Actions, Click the View course & Instruction tools under Books and Tools

3. Click the + sign to add the tool in the content area

4. The link to the Perusall will be created. Click the link.
5. When you are on the Perusall web page, Click the green Continue button at the right bottom corner.
6. On the Select Content page, select either “Start with empty course” or “Copy from existing course”

7. Fill in the basic information on your course

8. Start use Perusall
The Perusall Interface

 My Courses: View and access your other Perusall courses.

 Course home:

 Get Started: Set course details, students will see welcome message and assignments.
 Library: Add content by uploading documents, web pages, or use the Perusall catalog (note:
using the catalog could result in a fee for students)
 Assignments: Create and delete assignments, including differentiated assignments view and
download your class roster
 Students: Your roster in Perusall will populate automatically as students launch Perusall from
Blackboard Courses.
 Settings: Set course details (including a welcome message), adjust course grouping, and set scoring
options.
 Gradebook: View current scores for each assignment
 Export data: Export all content, all comments, assignment information, or all course data.
 Student view: Use this to see what your students will see.
 Notifications: Users are notified via email when anyone responds to a question they’ve posted, or
when they’re mentioned in a comment. All notifications can be viewed, and managed here.
 Notes: Users are able to create notes and share them with another user or the instructor. Notes
created here are private unless shared with others.
 Add to my Calendar: Perusall provides an assignment calendar that you can subscribe to from the
calendar on your computer or phone; depending on your calendar app's settings and capabilities, the
calendar can also update automatically if new assignments are added or if due dates change.
 Announcements: Create and view announcements. Only instructors can create announcements but
students can view and respond.
 General Discussion: This is an open chat for discussion, available to everyone.
Course Setup

Adding Content

1. From your Course home page, click on Library.

2. To add content from Perusall's catalog, click Add Content > Book from Perusall Catalog.
3. To upload a reading (PDF, Word doc, etc.) from your computer, click Add Content > Documents
from my device or Add Content > Documents from Dropbox.
4. To add a web page as a reading, click Add Content > Web page.
5. To add content (and/or assignments) from another Perusall course, click Add Content > Materials
from another course.
6. To add a video click Add Content > Video (YouTube, Vimeo, Google Drive, etc.)
7. To add a quiz, click Add Content > Quiz.

Learn more about adding content to your Perusall course.

Creating Assignments

1. Click on Assignments on your course home page.

2. Click Add assignment and select the content item you want to assign.
3. Select the part of the item to assign (all content or assign page rangers) and click Next Step.
4. Specify a deadline, assignment name, and instructions for students including additional settings and
reminders. When finished click Next Steps.
5. Choose course scoring settings or specific new soring settings for the assignment and click OK.
*Note: Scoring is set with a range from the lowest possible score a student can receive to the highest
possible score a student can receive. If you would like Perusall to automatically give credit for
students submitting any work at all, you can set the threshold score to 0
 Learn more about managing assignments.

Setting Course Policies

 Navigate to Settings > General to set overall course policies about assignment availability and
welcome message.
 Navigate to Settings > Grouping to manage discussion groups. Learn more about groups
 Navigate to Settings > Scoring to determine how Perusall will generate engagement scores, when
to sync scores to Blackboard Courses, and when scores are released to students.
 Navigate to Settings > Advanced to adjust fine-grained course options such as assignment score
precision and hiding grade feedback from students.

Viewing Discussions Within Content

1. Navigate to Course home.

2. Open a document in the Library tab, or open an assignment in Assignments tab.
3. When you (or your students) open a document, you'll see highlights superimposed on the document
that represent comments that students have entered.
4. Highlight text by clicking and dragging. You will see a new conversation panel appear on the right
side of the page. Enter a comment or question, and press Enter to save it.
5. When you start a comment thread, the text you highlighted will show in blue; student comments are
highlighted in yellow.
6. When someone responds to a question or comment, the original author receives a notification by
email and can post their own response by replying to the email. Students that ask a question can also
indicate that one or more of the responses answers their original question.
7. Control the highlights that you see by clicking the All comments filter dropdown at the top of the
page and selecting a filter.

Grading in Perusall
General Grading Options

There are two options that need to be set if you are going to manually grade your students.

1. Navigate to the Settings tab and click on the Scoring tab across the top.
2. Set when Perusall should release scores to students: immediately, as student submits, only after
instructor manually releases them, after assignment deadline has passed, etc.
3. Next, enter a lowest and highest possible score for students. This will allow you to grade based on the
point range you enter.
4. Only use the “threshold score for credit” option if you want student scores to be reported as credit (1)
/no credit (0). (Credit is given for scores at or higher than this threshold value, on the assignment
score scale specified above. Set to 0 to indicate that submitting any work at all should result in credit
for the assignment. Leave blank to disable threshold scoring.)
5. When finished, click Save Changes.

Automatic Scoring Criteria

Perusall has an automatic scoring feature that allows you to assign full credit when a student does anything
in an assignment (ex: leaves a comment, asks a question, etc.).

1. Navigate to the Settings tab and click on the Scoring tab across the top.
2. Scroll down to the Automatic scoring criteria and click into each of the rubric criteria to set the
percentage for each criteria.
3. Click the option button in each criteria to open additional options regarding how Perusall should
award credit.
 4. Make sure all your percentages equal 100%, use 0% for any field you do not want counted towards
students scores. (ex: Set quizzes to 0 if you are not using the quiz feature inside Perusall).
5. Once you are happy with how Perusall will award points to students click the Save Changes button.

Learn more about scoring in Perusall.

Syncing Your Grades to Blackboard Courses

There are three ways to sync the grades in Perusall to your gradebook in Blackboard Courses. You can sync
each individual Perusall assignment grade, sync the average Perusall score for each student, or you can
export the grades to Excel and then import them into Blackboard Courses in order to pick and choose which
scores are used.

Sync Individual Assignment Scores

To sync students’ individual assignment scores, you will need to create an assignment in Blackboard Courses
for every assignment in Perusall.

 In Perusall, navigate to the Settings tab and click Scoring and set the "Grade sync to LMS" setting
to either "Automatically sync individual assignment scores back to the LMS" or "Manually sync
individual assignment scores back to the LMS." Click Save changes.
 If you have already created the assignment in Perusall, but not yet in Blackboard course shell:
 In Perusall, click Course home, then Assignments, and select an assignment. "Click Copy
full title for LMS" and the assignment name will be copied to the clipboard
 In Blackboard Courses, click Assignments then +Assignment. Paste the assignment’s title
into the Assignment name field.
 The number in the Points field should match the high end of the Assignment score range of
your Perusall course (which is by default 0-3 and found in Settings then Advanced).
 Under Submission Type choose External Tool, the click Find. Select Perusall from the list
and click Select.
 Set the rest of the assignment settings and then click Save & Publish.
 If you have already created the assignment in Blackboard course, but not yet in Perusall:
 In Perusall, follow the steps above for "creating assignments" section above, just be sure to
give it the exact same name as in Blackboard course.

Learn more about Individual Assignment Grade Sync in Perusall.

Note: In order for grades to sync correctly, the student must get to the Perusall assignment by clicking on
the corresponding assignment in Blackboard Courses. If they access the assignment another way (a separate
link in Blackboard courses or through another assignment within Perusall), the grade will not sync. Once the
student launches the Perusall assignment from the assignment in Blackboard courses, the grade should
sync.

Sync Average Score

To sync a student’s average score (each individual assignment score summed and then divided by the total
number of assignments) you will only need to create one assignment in Blackboard Courses.

 In Perusall, navigate to the Settings tab and then click Scoring. Scroll to "Grade sync to LMS"
setting and select "Automatically sync students' average scores back to the LMS" and click Save
changes.
 In Blackboard Ultra, click + and then add Assignment.
 Title your Perusall Assignment Link. (For example, “Perusall Assignments”.)
 The number in the Points field should match the high end of the Assignment score range of your
Perusall course (which is by default 0-3 and found in Settings > Scoring).
  Under Submission Type choose External Tool, the click Find. Select Perusall from the list and
click Select.
 Click Save & Publish.

Learn more about average grade sync in Perusall.

Turn Off Sync and Manual Export/Import Grades

If you do not want to use the individual assignment option or the average score option, you can export the
gradebook from Perusall and import into Blackboard Courses.

 In Perusall, navigate to the Settings tab and then click Scoring. Scroll to "Grade sync to LMS"
setting and select "Do not sync grades back to the LMS" and click Save changes.
 In Perusall, navigate to the Gradebook and click the Download button at the top of the page.
 You can use Excel to edit the data and then copy the columns you want added back into Blackboard
Courses.
 To import new grade columns into Blackboard courses you will want to first download the gradebook
from Blackboard courses. In Blackboard courses, click on Grades, then the Actions drop down menu,
and select Export Entire Gradebook.
 Copy the columns from the Perusall spreadsheet and paste them at the end of the sheet you
downloaded from Blackboard courses.
 In your Blackboard course gradebook, click the Actions drop down menu, and select Import.
 Click the Choose File button, select the spreadsheet, and then click the Upload Data button.
 Once the data processes, Blackboard courses will ask you what to do with the new columns. For each
Perusall column you added select “A new assignment” from the drop down and assign the total points
possible then click Continue.
 Once you have reviewed the changes click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.