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

LabArchives Electronic Lab Notebook

LabArchives

LabArchives is an electronic lab notebook that can help instructors and learners better manage, share, and publish research notes, data, protocols, and related documents.

MiraCosta College’s  institutional license gives all  MiraCosta College students, staff, and faculty free access to LabArchives. Log on with your MCC login and password to access LabArchives. Faculty can also integrate Lab Archives with Canvas.

Getting Started

Launch MiraCosta LabArchives

Features of LabArchives

  • Share and collaborate on notebooks by multiple parties.
  • Store multiple file types, including images, GraphPad Prism, FlowJo, PDFs, and Office documents
  • Create templates, forms, and custom applications for routine laboratory tasks.
  • Instructors can provide feedback on students’ notebooks.
  • Storage of every version of every file, recording the date, time, and username.

Faculty LabArchives Help and FAQs

Need Help?

LabArchives Information for your Students

The MiraCosta College Student Helpdesk can assist your students with Canvas and LabArchives.

Respondus

Respondus Logo

Respondus is a quiz authoring and management tool that allows instructors to create exams, quizzes, and surveys offline that can then be published directly to Canvas. Test questions can be uploaded from a text file, rich text file, or Word document. Existing Canvas tests can be downloaded, saved, and printed.

MiraCosta College has a campus-wide license for the Respondus software allowing installation of the software on any on campus computer or faculty personal computer. Respondus is a Windows application. For MAC users Respondus is available via VMWare.

Tutorial

Example Word File & Tech Tips for Word File Import to Respondus

Additional Respondus Documentation

Canvas Information & Resources

Canvas-Logo

MiraCosta’s Canvas system may be accessed at miracosta.instructure.com – faculty and students log in with their SURF username and password. You’ll also find a button to log into Canvas at miracosta.edu/onlineSee below for many great resources to help you learn to use Canvas, and earn MiraCosta Flex credit along the way.


Top Canvas Resources for Faculty

  • Canvas Instructor Guides – comprehensive step-by-step tutorials on all Canvas features
  • Canvas Instructor videos – small but useful set of videos on key Canvas features
  • MiraCosta Canvas tutorials – locally created guides on key Canvas features and how Canvas works with SURF
  • 24-7 Canvas hotline for faculty: 1-833-345-2890
  • Questions about how Canvas works specifically at MiraCosta? Contact Karen Turpin, Online Instructional Technologist: kturpin@miracosta.edu / 760-795-6787
  • Do you think Canvas might be down or experiencing errors? Check the Canvas Status website.

Canvas Workshops

Online Introduction to Teaching with Canvas

MiraCosta faculty and staff join a completely independent version of the Online Introduction to Teaching with Canvas. This online course is a helpful way to get up to speed on the basics of Canvas on your own. You may also be interested in joining the free @One version of this class – see the @One catalog to sign up for an upcoming session.

Canvas Flex Workshop Recordings

For accessibility-specific workshops, please see “Canvas Accessibility Workshops” section below..

Flex Credit is available for viewing MiraCosta workshop videos. This is a pre-approved activity (in the Other Activities category Conferences and Presentations).

Canvas Accessibility Workshops

Please refer to the following resources to assist with Canvas accessibility:

Also, the Canvas Accessibility Self-Paced Course provides on-demand support. 

Tour a MiraCosta Canvas Class!

What does a Canvas class look like? Well, there are a number of approaches to designing a class in Canvas. Check out some short videos by MiraCosta faculty. And then go behind the scenes – in Canvas – to learn more!

Flex Credit is available for time spent engaging with any of the above resources. This is a pre-approved activity (in the Other Activities category Conferences and Presentations).

More Faculty Resources

Again, Flex Credit is available for time spent engaging with any of the above resources.

Canvas Faculty and Student Support

MiraCosta’s Online Education department provides support for faculty using Canvas, and MiraCosta’s Student Help Desk provides support for students in Canvas classes.

When local support is unavailable, including evenings and weekends, Canvas provides technical support for faculty and students at the following phone numbers.

Faculty: 1-833-345-2890
Students: 1-877-884-1673

Canvas has excellent “Getting Started” guides for faculty and for students. See above for more faculty training resources.

Faculty and students can also create a helpdesk ticket for support from within Canvas by clicking on the Tech Help icon and then selecting Report a Problem.

Tech Help, Report a Problem

You may also review recent and upcoming updates to the Canvas system, as well as submitting or voting on feature additions and changes you’d like.

Key LTI Tools Available in Canvas

  • Turnitin – originality checking, online grading and peer review
  • Zoom – Live web conferencing using Zoom
  • Studio – Create, manage, and engage with video
  • 3CMediaSolutions – Integrate videos you’ve saved in CCC’s 3C Media Solutions tool
  • NetTutor – Connect students to live online tutors (only for use in online and hybrid classes)
  • Google Drive – enabling tighter integration between Google apps and Canvas
  • Various publisher tools – click to learn more
  • Many other LTI tools (“Apps”) are available – some have been made available institutionally and you can see those in the Navigation tab of Course Settings; others can be enabled by faculty individually; you can see those in the Apps tab of Course Settings. See the Canvas Guide on the App Center to learn more.

Workarounds

Canvas does not have a dedicated journaling tool. It is possible to use Canvas tools to provide students with a place to submit their writings or reflections at various points throughout the semester. This is done by creating a series of assignments within the same assignment group.

How did MiraCosta get to Canvas?

MiraCosta College took on a comprehensive Course Management System evaluation in spring 2016 that led to the selection of Canvas. The college then transitioned away from Blackboard and Moodle and to Canvas during 2016-17 and 2017-18. Starting in summer 2018, Canvas is the sole supported course management system for MiraCosta classes.

One of MiraCosta’s early Canvas adopters, music professor Christy Coobatis, says this about using Canvas in spring 2017:

Has been an extremely successful semester because of it! 

Both students and I loved the program.

I have more and clearer communication than ever before!

Another, Adult High School professor Julie Cord, says:

I am in LOVE with Canvas and I truly feel it has helped support my students and my teaching already in very substantial ways.

3C Media Solutions

3cmedia_logo3C Media Solutions is a streaming media server for all California Community College faculty and staff. You can upload audio & video files and make them available securely, privately (if desired), and ad-free. Professional captioning is available at no cost.

3CMedia accepts files in the following formats: mp4, m4v, mkv, flv, wmv, avi, mov, mpg, webm, mp3, m4a, wma, wav

  • Optimal size for Audio file embed is 450 x 50.
  • Optimal size for Video file embed is 1280 x 720.

3C Media How-To Tutorials/Videos

Closed Captioning

To request professional captioning on instructional videos, first upload a video to 3C Media Solutions. After uploading it takes a little time (up to a few hours) for initial processing. Then:

  • Log into 3C Media Solutions
  • Click My Account at upper right
  • Click the Media tab at the top
  • Locate your video from the list
  • Click Details & Options on the right
  • Click the link labeled DECT Captioning Grant
  • Fill out and submit the form. Within a few days your video will have professional captions.

You may be interested in A Rising Tide: How Closed Captions Can Benefit All Students, an article with solid research indicating how widely used and important captions are for the majority of students today.

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