Perusall

Perusall Flex Workshop Recordings

  • Social Annotation with Perusall (Zoom Recording, 1 hour 5 minutes) – 1/16/2023 workshop by Jim Julius, Michael from Perusall, Rob Bond, John Kirwan, & Aaron Roberts

Perusall

Perusall makes it possible to have students comment, discuss, and share by annotating a document or image. Some possibilities might include:

  • annotating the textbook together (Perusall offers many common textbooks within its framework — see the catalog)
  • uploading pdf files and having students highlight and annotate
  • uploading images or videos and having students annotate

Perusall has been used independently by a number of MiraCosta faculty for several years, but starting in 2022 the college has licensed it, making it easier for all faculty to engage students in these kinds of rich, interactive learning opportunities. Perusall can be quickly added to any Canvas course. MiraCosta instructor and online mentor Lisa M. Lane has been using Perusall for some time, and has provided instructions and videos below to help faculty get started. You can also reach out to Lisa (email: llane@miracosta.edu ) to arrange for 1-1 mentoring support.

Before class starts: set up Perusall

To get started, you need to set up a site in Perusall. Perusall calls this a “course”. There are two ways to do this.

1: For Canvas courses organized around activity types

If your course materials for students are already set up by type (quizzes, lectures, readings) in Canvas, you may want to add Perusall to the menu. 

  1. Click Settings at the bottom of your course menu
  2. Click the Navigation tab
Settings, then Navigation

3. Click the gear icon to the right of Perusall

4. Select +Enable

5. Click the Save button

The Perusall link now appears in your course menu. You can click on the Persuall menu link and a new browser window will open. The first time you do this, Perusall will establish Perusall account and sync it with your Canvas account. If you already had a free Perusall account using your MiraCosta email address, Perusall will merge that account with the one being set up under MiraCosta’s institutional Perusall license.

Click on the Perusall course menu link in Canvas
A new window opens in your browser connecting your Canvas account with Perusall.  

Upon first launch (for anyone), they will be guided on a tour of the platform. If they ever need to restart the tour, they can click their profile icon in the top right corner. 

2: For Canvas courses organized in modules or units

If your course materials are organized for students to use Modules or units, you may want to use a test assignment to open the Perusall course.

  1. Add an Assignment, call it Test Perusall
  2. Don’t worry about points, instructions, and other settings
  3. Use External Tool – Find – Perusall
  4. Check the box to open in a new window
  5. Save
  6. In the assignment, click on the box “Load Test Perusall in New Window”

After doing this to connect your Canvas class and Perusall, you’ll follow the same process for setting up each Perusall assignment, and you can change this first Test Perusall assignment later to use it as an actual assignment.

The video below demonstrates both of the above methods for adding Perusall to your Canvas class.

Set up an assignment in the Perusall course

On the Get Started page: fill in boxes, but be sure that if you are not using groups, the number of students is set to your maximum

Library: choose the type of content for the first assignment and upload or put in URL

Assignments: click Add Assignment and select the content from your Library, choose your parameters for that assignment

Copy the name of the assignment exactly — it must be the name of your assignment in Canvas (that’s how Canvas knows which Perusall assignment to use).

Watch the video below for a demonstration of this:

Perusall settings and grading

Here is a video overview of the Perusall settings for a course:

One big settings choice for scoring or grading is this:

  1. Do you want the work graded as it is done, with student scores increasing as they go? or
  2. Do you want the work graded at the end by the instructor?

These are included in Settings, above. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Having grades go up as the student works can provide extrinsic motivation, but can also force the student to work to Perusall’s standards. Grading at the end means working quite a bit with the gradebook in Perusall, and it causes a problem with due dates. If the due date in Perusall matches the due date in Canvas (as it should so students cannot work past the due date), and the instructor grades after that date, Canvas will show the assignment as late. This will need to be explained to students, or manually changed in the Canvas gradebook.

Preventing problems with students going to the wrong assignment

There are two ways this can happen.

The student may go to Perusall.com trying to find the work

If a student gets locked out of the assignment, they may try to get in through Perusall.com, making an account. If they are successful, they will be able to annotate, but their grades will not be pushed back into Canvas, and they won’t get a score (you will see this with a red warning exclamation mark in the Perusall grades).

Solution: Encourage students to only enter Perusall through Canvas, through your assignment.

The student may navigate inside Perusall and click on the wrong assignment using the Library

Once inside Perusall, students, like instructors, can click on the left-hand list of both the Library and the Assignments. That means they can jump ahead to the wrong assignment or even in some cases jump back to an assignment that has already been graded, and work within it when you don’t want them to.

Solution: The best way to prevent this is to set the availability period for assignments, then make a hidden folder in the Library, and put all the Library items in there. Then make sure all Assignments have a due date. That way they can only click on an assignment, and only when it is open.

The video below discusses both of these potential issues:

During the class: Participating in annotating and discussing

Some instructors participate in the annotations as they occur. When participating, it’s good to use the @ symbol to alert particular students that you have a public question or annotation on their annotation. Perusall also allows students to upvote, and for you to upvote, particular annotations. The interactive nature of social annotation allows it to be a replacement for discussion if that’s how the instructor wants to use it.

Set up advance annotations if desired

You can set up questions, add video clips, or annotate your assignment yourself before the class begins as well as during the class. Instructor annotations are saved and can be rolled over to the next semester.

Grading assignments

It is usually not advisable to rely on Perusall’s automatic scoring algorithm.

Perusall’s algorithm attempts to analyze the depth and usefulness of a student’s comment, and that may not align with your goals. For example, an instructor who wants students to post five short superficial annotations or one long in-depth annotation will find that Perusall cannot make this distinction, and may give the student posting one long annotation a lower score.

Until you know the system is scoring like you want it to, it’s a good idea to check each student’s contributions. This can be done using the Students tab from the Course home page in Perusall:

view of student tab

Other options

Perusall is a complex program and can do many things. Scoring can be refined with multiple parameters. Student scores can be averaged and turned into a single Perusall grade rather than individual assignments. The recommendations above are designed for those who are new to Perusall.

Canvas Student View Warning

Canvas’ Student View button will not work with Perusall, since Canvas doesn’t send an email address to Perusall as part of that launch. To see what students will see once they launch into Perusall, utilize the Student View link on the left navigation bar within your Perusall course.

Perusall Faculty Support

Perusall Support for Your Students

Students should always launch Perusall from inside of Canvas

https://youtu.be/0wmCPeAqYjk

Studio Online Video Learning Platform

Studio Logo

Studio Flex Workshop Recordings


Studio is a video tool integrated inside of Canvas, which MiraCosta began piloting in spring 2019 when it was known as ARC. It is now available to all faculty and students indefinitely through state funding.

With Studio:

  • Faculty and students can easily record webcam and screencast video within Canvas
  • Faculty and students can create and manage a library of videos for use in Canvas (and to share outside of Canvas)
  • Faculty can create discussion activities that are based on video (discussion comments are tied to specific points in the video)
  • Faculty get data on student viewing of video
  • Faculty can add quiz questions into videos; students respond while watching the video; results go directly into the gradebook
  • Students can submit video assignments; faculty can provide feedback directly on specific moments in the video
  • Videos can be automatically captioned and the captions can be easily edited

Studio is available to faculty and students from the blue global navigation bar in MiraCosta Canvas.

Studio is also available to faculty only on the navigation menu within a MiraCosta Canvas course to RECORD or ADD video content.

Studio is also available to faculty only on the navigation menu within a Canvas course to RECORD or ADD video content.

Within the Canvas Rich Content Editor, faculty and students can select Studio from the second row of icons to add a Studio video they’ve previously recorded, or to create and use a webcam or screencast video right there.

Studio location in Canvas Rich Content Editor.

Helpful Guides

Check out an excellent website about Studio that MiraCosta associate faculty member Laura Paciorek created in summer 2020.

Studio tutorials/videos to get you started:

Browser Support for WebCams

Q. I tried using Studio but it keeps saying that it needs to access my webcam.

A. Follow the directions below for either the Chrome or Firefox browser to fix this problem.

To learn more about Studio and Canvas, view the full set of Studio tutorials.

Adding Videos Captioned in YouTube or 3CMediaSolutions to Studio

Unfortunately, videos you’ve already created in YouTube or 3CMediaSolutions will not have their captions preserved when you add them to Studio. Rather than starting captioning over again in Studio, here are some tips from Greg Beyrer of Cosumnes River College:

YouTube: Download the captions file from YouTube. The video must be set to allow community members to contribute captions. If the video already has English captions provided by the creator those cannot be downloaded, but you can tell YouTube you are contributing captions in a friendly language, say Canadian English, and then one-click copy the published captions to the new language. That could then be downloaded. YouTube does not download captions in a file that is recognized by Studio, so you have to convert those captions (.sbv file) into a Studio-friendly format (.srt file). This site does this: https://captionsconverter.com. (from YouTube Captions to Arc – Workaround Guide, where you can also find a video demonstrating the process.)

3CMediaSolutions: Simply download the (.vtt) caption file from a 3CMediaSolutions video, and then upload that file into Studio for the same video. If your video is lengthy, it may even be quicker to first upload it to 3CMediaSolutions and request the free professional captioning rather than going through the auto-caption and edit process in Studio. (from Making Arc Work with 3C Media Solutions, which includes a video demonstrating the process)

Reset Your Canvas Course Content

Overview

From time to time, you may want to delete all of the content in a Canvas course site. This is most typically needed early in the course building process. For example, after importing content from another course, you may realize that you imported from the wrong course. The directions described below will delete all content from your course site, but leave the course roster intact.

Warning about Deleting All Course Content

WARNING: This step deletes all existing content from your course. Take steps to preserve any content you want to keep (for example, copy and paste to a Word doc, copy select course elements to a sandbox course, import the course into another empty shell, etc.) before proceeding. DO NOT complete these steps in a current term course that is currently in process!

Reset Course Content in a Canvas Course

Canvas Guide: How do I reset course content?

1. Navigate to the course with the content you wish to delete.

2. From the course navigation menu, click the Settings link.

Settings

3. In the sidebar, click the Reset Course Content link.

Reset Course Content

4. Click the Reset Course Content button.

A completely new course shell with a new ID (the number following “https://miracosta.instructure.com/courses/…”) will be generated. All users previously enrolled in the course will remain enrolled.

Made a Mistake?

If for some reason you reset your course and it was a mistake report it as soon as possible. We have Test and Beta instances of Canvas we may be able to refer to for the content and/or to restore the original course.

Contact Karen Turpin, Instructional Technology Specialist at kturpin@miracosta.edu or Canvas Faculty Support 24/7 at 1- 833-345-2890 for assistance.

Automatically Publishing Zoom Recordings to Canvas Studio

You can upload your Zoom recordings directly to Canvas Studio automatically.

How do I Authorize MCC Zoom as a Conferencing Tool in Canvas Studio.

1. Click Studio on the Canvas main navigation bar.

2. Click on the 3 lines to the left of My Library

Step 1 and 2

3. Click Settings on the Studio menu

Step 3

4. Click the Conferences tab

5. Click Zoom User Authorization

Step 5

6. Click the Continue button

Step 6

7. Click the SSO button below the login screen

Step 7

8. Type miracosta-edu in the Company Domain box.

9. Click the Continue button.

Step 8 and 9.

10. You should auto log on to your Zoom account at MCC and move on to step 11. You may receive the MCC OKTA login page here. If so login with your MCC login/password. This is the same login and password you use for Canvas.

11. Click the the Allow this app to use my shared access permissions checkbox 

12. Click the Authorize button.

Step 11 & 12

View Authorized Zoom Integration

  1. Click the Pill Slider button to turn on Save Zoom recordings to Studio.
  2. Select a library to save to. Learn more about managing your Zoom app recordings in Studio.
  3. To disconnect Zoom from your Canvas Studio account, click the Deauthorize Zoom button. This step should only be completed if you no longer want your zoom account connected to Canvas Studio..
Step 1, 2, and 3

How to Copy Individual Items to another Canvas Course or Share them with another Instructor

Canvas’s Direct Share feature allows instructors to share individual course items to their other Canvas courses, and easily share individual course items with other instructors in Canvas. To use this tool you will need to have a course role of Teacher, TA, or Designer in your Canvas course.

Please keep in mind that Direct Share is only for sharing individual items. If you wish to copy an entire course’s content over to a new Canvas course site, it is best to use Canvas’s course import tool to complete the course copy process.

Copying items to other Canvas courses

Follow these step-by-step directions:

Sending items to other Canvas instructors

Follow these step-by-step directions:

You can manage items that have been shared with you from within your Canvas account.

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