Using Perusall to make subject readings interactive and engaging.

Have you ever thought: "If only students would do the readings for my subject - it would greatly improve their understanding." OR.. "I wish students would prepare before our class - it would make synchronous discussions much more useful and meaningful!"

These are common cries we might hear from many teaching staff. The learning tool 'Perusall' can be used effectively in these scenarios to improve students' engagement with readings and each other.

Perusall is a tool in which an online reading can become a social and interactive experience for students. The reading becomes a collaborative document, in which students can annotate, ask each other questions and up-vote others' ideas. Teachers can add prompts, answer queries, and add quiz questions.

Perusall also has algorithms that can provide a score based on student annotations and various interactions, and track student’s participation based on quantity of interactions and reading time. Teaching staff can also alter what metrics the score is based on.

We spoke to several of the staff across the University about their experiences of using Perusall.

I have found it very effective Glen Currie, Engineering

Subject/s: Contracts and Procurement, Project Management Principles and Sustainable Infrastructure Development (all Masters level).

Percentage of assessment per reading: 1-2%, Glen has found even this low percent is very motivating for students.

Glen was finding that engineering students were not willing to do much reading. The key challenge was to motivate the students to engage with the readings as they were needed as foundation for tutorials and lectures. He found when using Perusall, students on average read for 3.5 hours per week, which was a great increase.

Glen’s team used the Perusall activities as a trigger for questions in synchronous Q&A sessions in Zoom. Previously the teaching team wouldn’t receive many questions during the session, whereas after using Perusall, many students would ask questions or make comments in the Chat. Glen commented, "the types of questions students are asking are much deeper. Getting that pre-reading and pre-preparation is making the Q&A session far deeper and more engaging”.

Game-changer for us as well as for students Sarah Yang Spencer, Accounting

Subject/s: Integrated Accounting Studies (a postgraduate accounting capstone subject with around 100 students per semester).

Percentage of assessment: 15% (3 marks for each week’s reading and the best five scores out of 10 weeks). Sarah comments that this approach considers students’ well-being and allows them to drop the ball sometimes.

Sarah uses the case method to teach students analytical and critical thinking skills in the accounting discipline. It is essential for her students to read the cases and come to class prepared. In the past, only 20-30% of students would read the case ahead of time, and the class discussion was often lack-lustre.  Using Perusall has been a game-changer. Last semester, 75% of students consistently completed their reading tasks before class.

Perusall has changed her students’ learning behaviour and turned reading into an exciting social experience. Students collaborate and help each other to understand the underlying accounting issues. They come to class prepared, informed and ready for a more in-depth discussion. Perusall has also allowed Sarah to provide a guided reading experience for her students. She can use confusion reports (generated by Perusall) to detect the problem areas and tailor her synchronous time to address those specific aspects.

Finally, as a deal sweetener, Perusall can assess students' annotations' quantity and quality, automatically sync the scores back to the LMS, and produce learning analytics to feed forward.

Perusall provides summary data about student engagement. Over 75% of students completed readings with full grades and spent an average of 3.75 hours engaging with the material.

The Perusall dashboard provides an overview of student engagement with the readings.

Student engagement with readings through Perusall was consistently high throughout the semester.

The percentage of students completing the Perusall reading task each week.

It’s been a huge upswing in meaningful engagement and peer-to-peer interaction Catherine Smith, Education

Subject: Research in Educational Relationships ~200 students per semester.

Percentage of assessment: 4%; the percentage was motivating and encouraged more meaningful engagement.

For the first assignment in her subject, Catherine set readings that she needed the students to draw on as they covered particular theories for the assignment. Catherine used Perusall to guide students to examples within the set readings, and of how the writer was using those theories. She found this particularly useful for students of other disciplines who hadn’t applied sociological theories before. It has encouraged peer-to-peer interaction in the readings also.

Further information

If you are interested in exploring Perusall in your subject, see the following: