Perusall is a social annotation platform that turns traditional reading assignments into collaborative, interactive experiences. Instead of reading in isolation, students highlight, comment, and respond to each other’s annotations directly within the text – whether that’s a PDF article, a video, a webpage, or a podcast.
Why It Matters for Teaching
Perusall is designed to address a common challenge: getting students to read deeply and engage meaningfully with course materials before they arrive in class. A small group of Connecticut College faculty have been using Perusall for years, and now we are extending its availability to all faculty. A few features faculty tend to love:
- Collaborative annotations: students can reply to each other’s comments, ask questions, and build on each other’s thinking. You can also add comments, guiding the discussion and asking probing questions
- Moodle integration: easy for students to find and access and no need for additional accounts; assignments sync directly with the gradebook
- Automated engagement scoring: optional automated grading based criteria you define, providing a helpful first pass on student annotation quality and depth, flagging engagement patterns and insights on student activity.
Learn More! Upcoming Workshops
Introduction to Perusall Social Annotation
Thursday, September 3, 1:30 – 2:30 PM
Tuesday, September 8, 10:00 – 11:00 AM
Workshops will be held online via Zoom; please register to receive the meeting link. If these dates and times are not convenient for you, please make an appointment with Gerard Gadigian or Diane Creede.
