How Kelli Boling turns class time into real discussion

My name is Kelly Boling, and I teach a large lecture course with about 250 students called Social Justice, Human Rights in the Media. It's a required course for all of our journalism and mass comm students, but it is open to majors across the university, so I get a lot of elective takers in there. The semester I switched to Perusall, it changed the entire structure of the class. It changed the assignments, it changed the grading, it changed the amount of work that I have to do, and put a lot more ownership on the students to come prepared. So I would say using Perusall created the flipped class that a lot of people want and changed literally everything about the class.

I actually use Perusall for trade books. So instead of using a textbook, I have my students self-select into book clubs. And I looked at a lot of different collaborative annotation tools, and I liked Perusall the best. What I wanted from Perusall was for them to get credit for coming to class prepared. And with Perusall, I could set it up to make sure they had read and engaged with the material so that when they came to class, I'm not teaching the material, we're talking about it.

It is self-paced, but I try to say, "Read this chapter this week and this one the next week." But they start at the beginning of the semester, and then they have a deadline when the books are finished. So all the conversation during the reading of the books is on Perusall. And then once all that's finished, I actually break them up into groups so they can talk to other people who read their books face-to-face. So without Perusall, there's really no guarantee that they would have listened to or read those books. They probably read CliffsNotes or some kind of an AI summary, right? But with Perusall, they're sort of forced to go through each episode or each chapter and really think about it.

And so when they get together in those small groups, I don't have to be in the conversation. I haven't been in the conversation all semester. But I can go around and see how impactful the material was, and those conversations are so rich. And again, I don't know that they realize that their preparedness has made it that way. It's just the way the assignment is set up.

Meaningful student engagement to me is a conversation. It is someone sharing their own personal story based off of material that they've read inside Perusall. I get a lot of that. I'm not asking them to agree with everything I post. In fact, please debate it. Let's have a good in-depth conversation. You don't have to agree, but think about it. Think about it critically.

So I would say I'm not looking for a long comment in Perusall. I'm looking for a thoughtful comment, a personal comment, a link to some kind of an external source. I can sort of see before the class if we've got any points where I may need to be better prepared to handle more heated debate in class.

I also don't believe in making students buy a textbook. They're buying a $15 trade book instead of a $100 textbook. So having all those trade book options in Perusall, as well as all the materials that I can upload and the podcast and things like that, made my class more affordable for students. And so the students really embraced that. They really appreciated how much the class was built around Perusall and how much money that saved them. And they mentioned that in the course evals on a regular basis.

I also use Perusall for podcast groups. So I can actually link to podcasts through Perusall, and they're listening to episodes throughout the semester and discussing those on Perusall. And then once they've finished, we meet, and they get to talk in smaller groups with people who also listened to their same podcast.

In addition to that, I have weekly readings in Perusall, and those are sometimes articles on websites, PDFs that I upload, other materials that I want them to read, TEDx videos. I love including those from YouTube. We use it weekly, and we use it throughout the semester. I upload all of my own materials. There's way more than just textbooks in the catalog, and I think that's been phenomenal. Because of that, it's super easy for me to just duplicate assignments from semester to semester because most of those don't change.

I have it set up so they have to spend a certain amount of time on the assignments, and so I can see if they're doing that. I can ask specific questions in class for comprehension. And I do. I use a polling method in class behind me where they can answer questions. It's not graded, but I can tell did they read it or did they just skim? So they're coming to class prepared whether they realize it or not, and not asking them to take notes in class because they've already done the readings, the viewings, the listenings, whatever, and so they are so much more prepared for that engaged conversation.

What they don't realize is there's no conversation if they hadn't read the material on Perusall first. So they don't necessarily see how Perusall benefits. But I do because I've taught classes where the students didn't read the material before they come to class, and you're talking at them instead of with them. And how boring is that in a large lecture? And so when they raise their hand in class and reference one of the articles or one of the videos from Perusall, I can see how their preparedness has impacted the classroom environment, even though they may not realize it.

So at the beginning of the semester, and I observe this every semester, so at the beginning of the semester, they come in thinking, "Oh, this is just some discussion board. I can just post a word salad and I'm going to get credit." It doesn't work like that. But also, I'm looking at Perusall on a weekly basis, and I will pull the comments that I like and put them in the PowerPoint presentation.

So I will say I love this conversation that I saw on Perusall this week where John said this and Laura replied with this. If it is exceptionally good, I will even randomly give out a $5 Starbucks gift card. So I reward them for having good conversations. I don't participate in the conversations. I keep my voice out of it, but I'm out there looking. They quickly learn this is not a discussion board. The professor is out there, and we're going to talk about my comments potentially in class. And in a group of 250, you can see their face light up when I put their comment on the screen. It's pretty cool.

Perusall is 40% of the grade in my course. I don't do any tests or quizzes. I don't believe in a social justice course that's how you learn, is with tests and quizzes. I think you have to engage with social justice in a meaningful way, and that is hearing from others who have been impacted by those issues. I use Perusall really heavily in my course for grading engagement and all of that. So the students very quickly learn this is basically the test, and I need to take it that seriously.

I've also gotten pretty deep into the grading setup. So the grades for my podcast are different from the grades for the book, and so instead of me having to remember those percentages, I could just copy that template onto all the podcast assignments. Grading in a 250-person class, Perusall has automated that to the point that has made it bearable.

I get a lot of course evals at the end of the year that'll say, "I haven't read a full book in years, and breaking it up this way and seeing the conversation as I went along made this so much easier to do." I definitely still have a lot struggling with wanting to use AI. It just sticks out like a sore thumb in Perusall. Looks like somebody posting a definition in the middle of a conversation, and no matter how many times I tell them, "Don't do that," they still try it.

The good thing with Perusall is I have so many smaller assignments throughout the semester, literally every week. You screw up on that one and get a zero because you decided to use AI, you can still get full credit on next week's assignment. Right? So learn the lesson, move on, do the readings.

I've used a lot of Perusall's more interactive features, and I've never had a student that couldn't work within Perusall because of those accommodations that are available. I get a lot of international students that appreciate the feature of Perusall being able to read it to them. And I had a student just this past semester that was hearing impaired, and I said, "Not a problem. I'll upload the transcripts for you." And so it made it super easy for me to send him the transcripts so he could read and listen and still comment with the rest of the class.

I would say I've used a lot of the features. Anything that I had issues with, I would always reach out to Perusall tech support. They could not be faster. They're amazing people. And if it's a feature that they don't currently offer, they would suggest a workaround. But I've also had them, "We don't offer it right now, but give us six weeks and we'll put that in place." Something like that, which doesn't happen.

It's great. At this point, I can't imagine teaching without it. Actually, let me rephrase that. At this point, I don't want to imagine teaching without it. It's changed the whole course.

Perusall, in my mind, is not meant to be one assignment. It's meant to be the base of the class, and if you see it as that, not just one more tool I'm testing, you will have a better experience with it and so will the students. Because that will give the students time to get used to it and get a feel for it. It will give you time to get used to it and get a feel for it. So I say commit to it, change the structure of the course, and go feet first into the deep end.