Features

Using Perusall turns coursework into a social experience, making learning more fun and engaging while simultaneously helping students think critically and develop a deeper understanding of the material. The social connections intrinsically motivate students to participate in the assignment and with their classmates. In addition, email notifications alert students when someone comments on a thread. Students then may reply via email, and the new comment will post automatically within the Perusall course. Students enjoy Perusall's popular social networking features like @mentions, hashtags, and "up-voting" comments, making interactions more relevant to today's students.

Perusall's assessment features save instructors valuable time while providing actionable data. Assignments within Perusall are automatically graded, extrinsically motivating students to perform better in the course. Instructors can decide to take advantage of the automatic scoring feature, or they may choose to turn off the functionality. In addition, the following reports help instructors gauge how the class and individual students are understanding the course material:

• Student confusion report summarizes general areas of questions/confusion, helping instructors know what material to focus on in class. 
• Student activity report shows various statistics about each student's engagement with a particular assignment, allowing instructors to reach out and reengage with low activity students keeping the class on track. 

Perusall offers instructors built-in flexibility to create their ideal assignments. The content-agnostic platform lets instructors mix and match types of content within a single assignment. Instructors can differentiate assignments by selecting unique topics for each group of students. Students are also able to upload and share content within Perusall. 

Perusall's group chat feature may be used in multiple ways to encourage social collaboration. Students may have one-on-one discussions with other students or the instructor. Educators may use it for general course discussions around the weekly assignment or class announcements. 

Note-taking can help students identify key concepts and form connections throughout the assignment. Perusall's interactive note-taking feature goes beyond typical highlighting, allowing students to snip the content, create a note, and quickly jump back to the content in the assignment. Students may also integrate snippets from multiple pieces of content and share their notes with classmates or the instructor.

Rest easy knowing that Perusall syncs seamlessly with institutions' learning management systems. Students won't have to create separate Perusall accounts. Perusall courses connect automatically to the LMS, offering single sign-on and grade sync for individual scores or the class average.

We are committed to making our social learning platform accessible to as many students as possible. Perusall includes the following:

• Students can have course materials read aloud to them from within Perusall without using specialized screen reader software.
• Instructors can easily make alternate versions of materials available to students with particular needs. 
• Persuall includes resizable and responsive user interface components with zooming or resizing to change the text.
• A "dark mode" with a darker user interface that is more readable in low light conditions is available.

Perusall was created by educators for educators, and the privacy of students and instructors is paramount to us. Our privacy policy details the specific, limited instances in which data is shared (for example, with a few trusted service providers that provide server hosting and payment processing). Perusall does not sell or share student data with our publisher partners. Revenue is generated through sales of eBooks and institutional subscriptions (for advanced features and service contracts), allowing Perusall to offer the platform without compromising student and instructor privacy.