Overview

Perusall®

Perusall is an online social learning platform that prepares every student for every class. Students collectively comment and collaborate with all types of course content, asking each other questions, helping their classmates, sharing opinions and ideas, and building their understanding of course material. Students are motivated to learn by engaging deeply with the material together with their classmates - whether in-person, online, or hybrid.

Perusall was created by a team of educators with a strong pedagogical background. The platform was designed to be easy for instructors to get started quickly: within 30 minutes, instructors can set up a course with a variety of assignment types for their students using their favorite course content; adopting an ebook from the Perusall catalog with over 1.4 million titles from 54,000 publishers; integrating podcasts, videos, and web pages; and uploading documents, EPUBs, open educational resources, and more. An integrated training component provides students with guidance on how to leverage social learning in Perusall to build their own knowledge and understanding of course material. Throughout the term, instructors can leverage insights on student engagement and student confusion to respond to individual student needs and use class time most effectively.

Features and uses for instructors

With Perusall, instructors in any department can create courses with any content they want, mix-and-match content when building assignments, and receive real-time insights and analytics of their students’ engagement.  Perusall offers customizable assessment tools for instructors using autoscoring, and Perusall easily integrates into your institution's learning management system.

Features highlights

• Organize all your course materials in one place in the course library.
• Build single-item, multi-part, multimodal, peer review, and differentiated assignments to meet your teaching needs.
• Receive real-time insights and analytics of your students’ engagement with features like Perusall’s student confusion report and student activity report.
• Customize your assessment to match your pedagogical goals, and use Perusall’s automated scoring feature to reduce additional work.
• Break your students into groups for more focused and intimate conversations.
• Utilize generative AI tools like AI-generated discussion prompts to save time in setting up your course.
• Easily integrate your course with your institution’s LMS for student access and roster, group, and grade sync.

Getting started

Instructors web page | create a LMS course 

Perusall offers various materials to help you get started! Watch tutorials and explore additional resources below.

• Perusall Academy: Training series to teach you how to use Perusall in your courses.
• PerusHall: Community of instructors, course designers, and administrators using Perusall around the world.
• Social Learning Amplified: Podcast hosted by Eric Mazur featuring educational leaders and experts.
• Perusall Book Events: Asynchronous, author-facilitated, communal reading experiences open to all readers.
• Perusall Exchange®: Annual community conference with over 30 presentations on trending educational topics.
• Perusall knowledge base: Resources and information for instructors, students, university administrators, bookstores, and publishers.

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Additional features and uses for students

Students are encouraged to use Perusall for their own learning – like a personalized digital study guide! Perusall offers students additional features such as a private note-taking feature, dynamic student feedback, a customizable Perusall profile, and adjustable settings to meet accessibility needs.  Students can also use Perusall outside of their courses to create study groups and book clubs.

Features highlights

• Comment, upvote, and quote reply to build understanding and respond to your peers. Add GIFs, emojis, polls, and images to create lively conversations around course material.
• Take private notes with Perusall’s note-taking feature to share with classmates or download for future reference.
• Adopt academic best practices when crafting original content using tools such as Citation Helper.
• Receive dynamic student feedback for tips and ideas on how to work toward a better score.
• Personalize your Perusall profile to create an inclusive social learning experience.
• Click on an avatar to start a synchronous 1:1 chat with another classmate.
• Use accessible features like read aloud and dictating comments to engage with materials without special screen software.
• Start a book or journal club to read and collaborate with each other.

Getting started

Student web page | Knowledge Base for students
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What is the cost?

Perusall is developed by educators for educators. Perusall has no ads, no investors, and will never sell your data. Instead, the service is voluntarily supported by our users in three ways:

‍Adopting a book from the Perusall catalog: Publishers support Perusall when access to books are purchased directly from our catalog or through your campus bookstore. Explore the catalog of over 1,400,000 available titles

‍ Purchasing an institutional license: Institutions support Perusall when purchasing a license. (Note: Perusall offers LMS integrations to all institutions free of charge.) Learn more about institutional licenses

For institutions without a license, learn more about our pricing.

Choosing a platform access fee for your students: Instructors and students support Perusall when students pay to access the course. Instructors have full agency to decide the price of their course for their students. Instructors or departments may also purchase bulk access for students. Learn more about Course Choice*

*Course Choice is available to instructors using free materials in a course at an institution without a license.

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Book orders

The Perusall catalog features over 1,400,000 titles, encompassing diverse subjects from Humanities to Science, English, Mathematics, and beyond. Interested in a book outside of our catalog? Contact orders@perusall.com and our Operations Team will be happy to assist. 

Perusall also works with campus bookstores to provide access codes for students who may want to purchase their ebooks through the bookstore. Bookstores should contact orders@perusall.com to place an order for access codes. 

Please note: Book purchases are not included in the Institutional License agreements.
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Support

If you’d like to discuss how Perusall might be most useful in your course, contact your Center for Teaching and Learning administrator or respective contact at your institution.

If you have additional questions, need technical assistance, or would like to discuss a feature idea, contact Perusall Support.
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Interested in an institutional license?

If your institution has an Institutional License, we will provide you with a customized informational packet, specific to your LMS and relevant to your institutional usage. To inquire about a customized informational packet for your licensed institution, please reach out to Perusall Engagement. If you would like to learn more about Perusall Institutional Licenses, please reach out to Perusall Support.