Perusall Commenting Guide
As I describe here, I use Perusall in all my courses. Below is the guide I give to students to help them understand how to use Perusall. Feel free to use it yourself.
What to Write
Hopefully you will not have trouble thinking up things to write in Perusall. If you are reading closely and thinking carefully about the texts, probably you will have lots of questions and comments to add. But, if you are having trouble thinking of things to write, here are some options:
- Find an argument that the author is making. Highlight its premises and label them as premises in the argument. Highlight its conclusions and label them as conclusions in the argument.
- You can also do other things based around arguments, like summarizing an argument in your own words, asking why a certain premise is necessary, asking whether a conclusion follows from some premises, describing how the argument is similar or different to other things in the text or in the course, and so on.
- You can do this for part of an argument and suggest that other people fill in the other parts of the argument.
- Highlight a confusing word, sentence, or passage, and paraphrase the highlighted material in your own words to make it less confusing.
- Highlight something you find confusing or interesting and ask a question about it.
- Answer someone's question or add information which you think either might help answer the question or which is related to the question in some other way
- Note that you also have the question and give more information about why you have this question
- Highlight something that you think is related to another point in the reading, in another reading, in one of the lectures, in one of the reading quizzes, or anything else, and explain that relationship.
- Highlight something you agree or disagree with and say why you agree or disagree
- Respond to someone's agreement or disagreement by saying whether you concur with them and why you do or do not concur.
- Highlight an important vocabulary word or phrase which the author is using and talk about what it means, perhaps by drawing on the author's definition from an earlier reading or by giving your own understanding of what you think they mean.
- Highlight a principle the author is discussing and give a concrete example of the principle, either hypothetical or from a real life situation.
- Highlight an example the author is discussing and explain what principle they are illustrating with this example.
- Highlight something from the reading which relates to something in the news, or from your life, or any other relevant thing which can help illuminate the reading.
These are not the only things you can do in Perusall, but these are good suggestions if you find you do not have ideas.
How the Grading Works
You don't really need to worry about the details of the grading, because if you adequately comment on assignments you'll easily get full credit. But, if you want more information:
Perusall is set to require “7 thoughtful comments” for “full credit” on an assignment. You do not need full credit, or anywhere near it. Each Perusall assignment earns a hidden score from 0 to 9, and a 9 is full credit. But, if you score a 4 or above, you get one point in Canvas (and on Perusall). All Perusall scores on Canvas (and the score you see on Perusall) are a 0 or a 1.
Each comment is scored by Perusall as “low,” “medium,” or “high” quality. A “low” quality comment gets 2 points, a “medium” quality comment gets 4 points, and a “high” quality comment gets 5 points. I don’t know how those points relate to assignment credit, but typically 4 “high” quality comments earn full credit, 3 “high” quality comments sometimes earn full credit, and 2 or fewer “high” quality comments do not earn full credit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Perusall label a comment “medium,” and “low” comments are typically comments like “what is this?” or “I don’t understand this” or other comments that are not adding a lot.
If you think Perusall has mis-scored you for an assignment, email me and I will look into it.