Perusall Exchange®

What do students hear when their professors ask for "quality" responses to readings? This presentation will explore how an emphasis on "quality" annotations might hamper students' engagement with readings in Perusall, limit their development of active reading skills, and ultimately lead them to generate responses with AI. Leaning into the social media nature of Perusall and encouraging frequency of genuine responses to reading can build confidence, especially amongst lower-division students...

This research explores instructors’ experiences teaching at the University of Florida’s Schools, Society, and Policy undergraduate program, where Perusall is used to foster collaboration and enhance students’ engagement with required course readings. Through practitioner journals and storytelling circles, we examine how Perusall influences our assessment strategies, supports students with reading, and transforms engagement in asynchronous online courses. These reflections reveal new ways to...

This presentation will explore the neurochemical foundations of reading and how current challenges affect this cognitive process. It will address the decline in reading skills and the need for innovative teaching strategies. Key topics include the neurochemistry behind reading, the role of social learning experiences, and the importance of self-regulation in deep, collaborative reading. The discussion will highlight how tools like Perusall can enhance reading engagement through features such...

Group size is an important and relatively unexplored variable in social annotation. This study provides a rigorous within-subjects approach to evaluate group sizes of ~20, 10, and 5 students in the Perusall social annotation platform. Students in the largest group with more access to peer annotations, had higher output levels on a per student per document basis, and a more favorable responsive/initiative annotation balance. Furthermore, longitudinal analysis of responsive/initiative balance...

In a second-year occupational therapy workshop class, generative AI was used to enhance student learning. Students employed AI to brainstorm and refine therapy strategies for a client case study. Additionally, they engaged in a role-play activity with 'Mrs S', an AI primary school teacher character, to practice communication skills in realistic scenarios. This approach provided a safe, authentic environment for students to explore AI's potential in professional settings, improving their intervention plans and offering perspectives on ethical and professional AI use in occupational therapy.

This is an episode of our Materials Education Podcast, Undercooled. We talked to Chat GPT about pedagogy, teaching lab classes, the role of accreditation in engineering, and how to create Standards for an Introduction to Materials course. We also talk about how to make sure Chat GPT is telling us the truth and how to best use it to teach students Materials Science and Engineering.

Situated within the context of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), this presentation captures the instructors' experience implementing a project in MA English Language Teaching Methodology courses across two universities in HK and the UK. It discusses their use of Perusall in mediating student(-teacher)s' learning via the design of micro-teaching-focused activities guided by social learning theories, the affordances of Perusall in amplifying pedagogic, social and other benefits, the challenges both instructors and students faced, and strategies employed to overcome the hurdles. Evaluation of the COIL project is based on artefacts of the student(-teacher) s' work and their perceptions.

AI exercise with undergraduate students in Chat GPT has the objective to explain one way to explore the app in classes. All students must explore different topics in the application and find what is the most important information and that best contributes to the investigation. To do this, first I explain the characteristics of the application, I give them time to explore what they want to recognize the resource and then they investigate class topics. Finally, the successes and failures of the activity are discussed and a proposal is made to take advantage of this tool in the future.

This presentation will discuss an exercise to be used at the brainstorming and thesis generative phase of a larger assignment. In this assignment, the instructor provides AI-generated responses to brainstorming questions, which are uploaded so students can annotate, ask questions, and think about what might be missing from the AI's outputs. The specific example provided will be from a college freshmen writing and research course that asks students to consider possible research topics and begin to think critically about their academic interests and research.

In Spring 2023, faculty decided to overhaul Yale’s popular ten years old Life Worth Living elective course in which students pursue questions of existential meaning. The teaching team viewed the proliferation of limited and generative artificial intelligence as an opportunity to revisit basic assumptions about what makes a Humanities seminar successful. This case study spotlights the principle of student personal engagement as a guiding factor in decisions involving appropriate use of artificial intelligence in the syllabus honor code policy and participation grading in the re-designed Life Worth Living course.

In the era of AI and technological advancements, fostering flexible collaboration is essential for both students and educators. This abstract advocates for a dynamic, robust learning environment enhanced by integrating technological advancements and real-world applications through problem-based learning. This strategy emphasises a holistic approach to education, advocating for the use of platforms like Perusall for clear role delineation and the evaluation of key personal and academic attributes. By introducing industry professionals and lecturers from diverse, interconnected disciplines, it aims to bridge theoretical learning with practical, real-world applications. Furthermore, incorporating top performers from previous cohorts as casual tutors is proposed as a means to enhance team performance through improved collaboration, leveraging the diverse roles within the Perusall ecosystem to foster a dynamic and interactive learning environment. A mixed-methods approach assesses these strategies' impact, aiming to enhance educational adaptability, relevance, and effectiveness, thus preparing individuals for future complexities.

Many users of Perusall have already considered how this technology can support student use of a textbook, and have also considered how combining Perusall with a textbook influences their role as teacher. With Generative AI, another variable has now been added and teachers must consider how they can improve their course with this new technology. In this video presentation, Generative AI is viewed as an “agent to think with” and it is described how ChatGPT be used generate interactive “Confusion Reports” that inform instruction in ways the standard output from Perusall does not.

Perusall, as a virtual, social, collaborative platform, encourages students to read assigned journal articles while connecting with their peers outside the classroom. The chat feature on Perusall enables students to receive live feedback while reading materials and motivates them to connect with their peers. Undergraduate and graduate students have been tasked with reading journal articles outside the classroom and are assigned to complete each article before each class for one semester. Students have read before the class, and Perusall improved students’ pre-reading on assigned articles to save the class meeting time for more active learning activities and student-led group discussions.

This paper outlines a faculty development initiative centered on two evidence-based education (EBE) interdisciplinary workshops, employing quantitative and qualitative approaches. These workshops utilize Perusall, to assist faculty members at Mexico's largest public university in leveraging scientific evidence from literature to inform and enhance their teaching practices. To date, we’ve had 663 participants enrolled in Perusall, with an encouraging 70% of them actively engaging through comments on the reading materials. We have found that as the complexity of the texts increases, there's a decline in both the number of participants and the frequency of comments.

This paper explores integrating innovative AI tools like Grammarly or ScholarAI into the dissertation writing process. It outlines how these technologies can transform and enhance the clarity and mechanics of writing. Furthermore, these tools can assist in narrowing down their topic, identifying the literature for review and potential research gaps, guiding through the research design and data analysis mechanics, and reference management. This paper demonstrates the potential of AI to not only streamline elements of academic writing but also foster a deeper understanding of the subject matter and build expertise, ultimately leading students to academic success.

This flipped classroom study explored student satisfaction with asynchronous lecture video recording interactions on Perusall. An anonymous, mixed-methods survey revealed that nearly 75% of respondents had a positive perception of watching the pre-recorded videos in Perusall. About 50% of respondents positively perceived reading/writing/answering annotations, having assignment deadlines, upvoting, and watching an introductory “how to” video. Second-year students were more satisfied with asynchronous lecture video interactions than first-year students, particularly with watching pre-record videos on Perusall (Cohen’s d=0.92). Additional research is needed to understand the influence of demographic factors on student satisfaction with Perusall.

Discover how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping online education, and can restore active learning and social interaction at scale. Explore the integration of AI-powered tools, preparing students for an AI-augmented workforce. Uncover the potential of personalized learning experiences, tailored to individual interests and pacing. Addressing the challenge of isolation in online learning, deliberate inclusion of social interactions fosters engagement and connection. Join us to explore the future of education, where adaptability, collaboration, and lifelong learning are paramount in navigating technological advancements and shaping successful career trajectories.

Based on pedagogical experiments in history courses at the University at Buffalo, this presentation aims to explore how to introduce this new technology, instruct its "threat" to academic integrity in the classroom, and implement it in the integration of digital humanities into the classroom.

Perusall can be a valuable ally for instructors in the Humanities classroom, as it can promote active reading, critical thinking, and student collaboration. It can also give instructors valuable insights into their students' learning and allow them to adjust their teaching accordingly. In this presentation, we will share our practices for successfully incorporating Gen AI into the classroom and improving the quality of education while facilitating higher long-term memory retention, better student-centered learning, and hands-on applications that efficiently bridge the gap between theory and practice.

As teachers grapple with how to create “AI” proof assignments, Perusall offers teachers an opportunity to bring the “human” back into the reading and writing process. In this teaching demonstration, I will model how to use an on-ground gallery walk (or the use of Jamboard for online courses) to encourage students to make “schema connections” with texts and how to transfer those “schema connections” into active engagement with Perusall. In this way, teachers can use Perusall to introduce the “read-write connection,” guiding students to transform their reading experience of texts into papers that express their unique perspective as individuals.