Perusall Exchange^® Library

Lauren M. W. Barbeau University of Georgia, Center for Teaching and Learning Athens, GA, United States "Critical thinking across disciplines depends on an ability to comprehend and respond to course readings, but students often lack reading strategies needed to make sense of material and avoid reading altogether. Educators forget that reading is a skill to be mastered within a discipline. This session introduces participants to the meta-reading skills they employ as expert readers in their disciplines with a focus on using Perusall to help students move from novice to expert readers. "

Mahalingam P. R. Muthoot Institute of Technology and Science, Computer Science and Engineering Ernakulam, India When learning goes online, learner engagement becomes a top priority. Perusall’s annotation tools promote learner engagement through gamification in the classroom. In order to implement gamification, three major metrics can be used - auto grading score, active reading time percentage, and upvotes. The end result will be a consolidated set of points that have been decided based on the time spent on learning the content, quality of annotations, and helpfulness of annotations. In principle, this is a good measure of how well the content has been consumed by each student. This concept was tested in one course during Fall 2020, and was found to correlate well with ground truth.

Steve Yalisove, University of Michigan, Materials Science and Engineering, Ann Arbor, Michigan United States: Sadly, textbooks tend to become really thick as they approach the 5th or higher editions. They become more like encyclopedias instead of easy to read books. Yet, either your department demands you use it or it is simply the best book. How can you assign 80 pages of dense technical text for thoughtful reading before every class? Your students will revolt. This talk will offer a way to solve this problem by creating reading problems with links to the parts of the text or recorded lecture in Perusall, that can be used as reference. This taps into our student's well honed hunter-gatherer skills. Keeping everything in Perusall allows your class to interact and reap the benefits of Perusall's team-based social platform.

Dagmar Scharold, Manuel Fernandez University of Houston-Downtown, English (Scharold), Technology Learning Services (Fernandez) Houston, TX, United States We will focus on using Perusall to create a synchronous annotation jam where students and the instructor read and annotate the text together. In an annotation jam, the instructor becomes part of the class, introducing relevant Perusall functionalities and modeling annotation practices. Students can see all annotations in real time, thereby making reading as visible to students as writing.

Erwin A. van Vliet, Natasa Brouwer, Sjoukje Kerman, Francien Giebels, University of Amsterdam, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, Center for Neuroscience, Amsterdam The Netherlands: What started,at the University of Amsterdam in September 2019, as a pilot in which Perusall was used in one course with 60 users,evolved into a professional organization to support more than 400 courses with over 8000 users within the whole university, including a Perusall helpdesk and a website for support. We would like to share our key steps in this process.

Phoebe Jackson SALTISE (www.saltise.ca) & John Abbott College, Physics Montreal, Canada This session showcases a scaffolding tool that helps address three challenges teachers face when using Perusall: low annotation quality, the tendency to use Perusall for Q&A rather than a critical exploration of the text; and a decrease in engagement over time. This session encourages a discussion of best practices for scaffolding students’ use of Perusall and offers a free tool that attendees can download and use as is, or modify to their needs (www.saltise.ca).

K. Chimène Gecewicz, University of South Alabama, Global USA, Mobile, AL United States: I have been using Team-Based Learning in my classes for the past five years. Normally the preparation phase is an individual activity, but with Perusall, I saw the potential to turn this phase of the cycle into an additional opportunity for team engagement. I instructed students to work with their teammates to anticipate questions that might appear on the in-class readiness assurance test. Students are now engaging more deeply with the text and their teammates.

Kristen D. Fulfer Centre College, Chemistry Danville, KY, United States In my general chemistry courses, I implement Just in Time Teaching (JiTT) where students are asked to respond to content before class. Recently, I started using Perusall for JiTT. I give students prompts either through assignment instructions or comments that I post throughout the text or video. Students respond as well as post their own comments and questions throughout. I am able to tailor our class time to focus on common areas of confusion.

Lama Masri Frederick Community College, Adult Education and ESOL Frederick, MD, United States Creating activities for ESL learners on Perusall allows learners to apply strategies needed to develop and improve their reading skill. Learners are able to interact with the reading passage, respond to prompts, and engage in discussions with other learners. Instructors are able to customize activities to meet the reading goals for their classes, and track, view, and respond to students’ posts. Reading in online ESL classes can be as engaging as in physical classes.

Vickie T. Fedele University of Delaware, Associate in Arts Program Wilmington, DE, United States "In this session, I will discuss the power of combining TED Talks with Perusall annotations to make remote classes seem more personal. The evocative subject matter of TED Talks inspires students to connect with the speaker, and the annotation of the talks inspires them to connect with each other. If synchronous class discussion follows the Perusall exercise, it is particularly robust and lively, providing even more opportunity for students to feel engaged in the course."

Lauren Barbeau, Assistant Director for Faculty Development and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at the University of Georgia, moderated a live discussion with instructors about how they use Perusall to increase student engagement in and outside of the classroom.

Carla Reyes The College of Wooster, Academic Resource Center Wooster, OH, United States Many college undergraduates begin their intensive higher-level learning with underdeveloped reading strategies and struggle to cope with the large amount of texts they are assigned. A modeling approach can induct developing readers into a more efficient community of practice, but it requires a significant time investment. By using the collaborative highlighting and conversations features in Perusall, it may be possible to give developing readers an “insider’s view” of the metacognitive strategies applied in real time by expert readers.

Karen A. Aicher Bridgewater State University, Communication Sciences and Disorders Bridgewater, MA, United States This session describes the process used for implementing Perusall as part of graduate coursework in allied health programs to foster increased engagement and develop asynchronous discussion skills regarding evidence-based practice. The goal of the interactive portion is to hold a brain-storming session with other workshop participants about how to gain interdisciplinary support and how to structure our assignments on Perusall in ways that are meaningful for our students, their faculty mentors, and our community partners.

Charles E. Youngs Bethel Park High School, English Language Arts Pittsburgh, PA, United States This session reports an English teacher’s experience in remote, concurrent teaching situations at a high school near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, using Perusall with students for the first time, and presents qualitative results suggesting the e-reader provides an effective means to improve study and discussion of complex literary texts. Where virtual class meetings often fell silent, Perusall's asynchronous small group discussions gained traction and promoted close reading, participation, and comprehension. Exemplars, assessment, and student response are presented.

Veronika Dolar, SUNY Old Westbury, Politics, Economics and Law, Old Westbury, NY United States I use Persuall for two separate sets of readings - together worth 40% of students’ final grade. The first one is for actively engaging with the textbook material. The second one is for Weekly Read and Annotate Assignments where we carefully read one or two newspaper articles related to the topic covered in class. These assignments are intended to cultivate a collaborative reading experience that allows us all to engage one another and the materials in a thoughtful, social, and dynamic way. Annotating in detail and in this collaborative form is a step towards developing larger analyses and strategic reading skills. This helps builds a community that promotes peer-to-peer learning and diverse cultural expression."

Susan E. Hrach, Columbus State University, English, Columbus, Georgia United States: Setting an inviting tone through your course materials and annotations can keep students motivated to persist in dense, difficult subjects. Instructors can model enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity by using Perusall's annotation tools, making the course welcoming and fun. In this session, we'll experience the visual impact of a wide variety of learning materials, as well as the difference it makes to encourage students to connect material to their own knowledge and experiences.

Edythe P. Wakevainen Macomb Community College, Psychology Warren, MI, United States Based on three true-or-false questions regarding Perusall, this interactive presentation addresses the use of Perusall in various activities designed to help students achieve learning outcomes. These activities are used in diverse subject areas and could easily be adapted across the curriculum. The presentation provides evidence that students react positively to their Perusall-based work.

Alison H. Melley George Mason University, Psychology Gaithersburg, VA, United States In this interactive presentation, I will describe an interteaching approach taken in large enrollment courses. Students work together to solve problems on an instructor-created pdf in Perusall, then identify their most pressing questions. They come to class to find out the answers to these questions and are then responsible for submitting their own answers to the questions posed in Perusall. This approach has been applied in face-to-face classes as well as synchronous and asynchronous online courses.

Pablo Valdivia, Hans Beldhuis, Koos Winnips, University of Groningen, European Culture and Literature, Groningen, The Netherlands: In our presentation, we will share our educational innovation at the University of Groningen, where we transformed traditional passive culture and literature courses into 21st-century learning experiences that efficiently prepare students to develop the skills to not only successfully complete their academic studies but also excel in their future professional career paths: from team-based learning to effective written and oral communication.

Vincent de Boer, Hans Beldhuis, Koos Winnips,University of Groningen, Educational Support and Innovation, Groningen, The Netherlands: Though the power of Perusall as a tool for student preparation is evident, collaborative and interactive learning is not always reached. In our presentation we will focus on (research on) how blended learning design, with a learning cycle of instruction and feedback on both content and approach strategies, can enhance interaction, collaboration and learning on higher cognitive levels. During the session we want to show participants ways to incorporate Perusall in a blended learning design.