Once you’ve successfully accessed your Perusall course site from a Canvas link, you can upload content for your students to read. Perusall currently allows instructors to assign a variety of types of content, included (but not limited to) the following:

• Documents (PDF, word, and other formats)
• Videos publicly hosted on YouTube and Vimeo
• Podcasts publicly hosted online
• PowerPoint slides and images (not all files compatible with Perusall)

The instructions below explain how to upload files from a computer (such as PDFs, images, or PowerPoint slides). Perusall’s website provides detailed instructions for adding videos and podcasts. If you are using PDF files, those with OCR (e.g. when you can highlight individual sections of text in a PDF) will be most accessible and easiest for your students to annotate. You can use OrbitNote (available through BC) to add OCR to a PDF.

Note that this process has two parts: uploading the files, and then creating assignments with these files. Although students can technically still access these files before an assignment has been created, the process of creating an assignment will ensure a smoother experience for your students.

Upload Documents and Other Files

To add files to the course, click the “Library” tab at the top of the course home page [1].

On the Library page, click the “Add content” button on the top right [2]. Select “Documents from my computer” [3] and locate your file in the box that pops up on your computer.

Depending on the size of the file, it may take a few minutes to upload.

Create an Assignment

Once your file has been uploaded or your video/podcast link has been added, click on the “Assignments” link at the top of the page [1]. On the Assignments page, click the “Add assignment” button [2].

In the box that pops up, you will need to input assignment information. First, select the reading you just uploaded under “Content to assign” [1] and then select whether you want to assign a portion of the reading (“Assign page ranges”) or the entire reading (“Assign entire document”) [2]. Click “Next step” [3] to move on to the next page.

On the next page, set the assignment deadline [1] and type in the assignment name [2]. If you’d like, you can also type instructions for your students on this page.

If you’re planning to use Perusall’s automatic scoring and want to customize the scoring setup for a specific assignment, you can adjust this by clicking on the “Next step” button and making changes on the final page. Otherwise, you can click “Save changes” [3] and your assignment will be set up for students to access.

Your assignment has been set up. After students submit annotations, you will be able to view assignment details and analytics on the Assignments page. You can also select the “Edit” button to make any changes to your settings.