Perusall is a collaborative online reading tool. It supports students to annotate digital reading materials collaboratively and intelligently scores student participation. 

Perusall offers its LTI integration with LMS for free. Individual instructors and institutions can contact Perusall Support to obtain their LTI integration credentials (a consumer key and a shared secret) and add the tool in CN as an External Tool. 

This article will show instructors the basic steps of setting up Perusall in a CN course and using Perusall for assignments. If your program or institution has added Perusall as an External Tool in your course, you can directly jump to Part2. 

Part 1: Configure Perusall as an External Tool

After contacting Perusall Support for the LTI integration credentials (a consumer key and a shared secret), either an institution/program admin or course instructors can configure the LTI tool. The route for admins is CN Channel>>Integration>>External Tools. The route for course instructors is the Course left menu>>Manage External Tools. 

Part 2: Perusall as Learning Activity 

Once Perusall is configured and became available in your course, you can first create a Perusal External Tool activity to create a new Perusalll course and enroll students into the course. 

In this part, we will show instructors how to use Perusall as an External Tool activity. This way of using Perusall leverages automated course creation, account creation, user course enrollment, and access to the associated Perusall course. This approach does not support automated assignment score passback.  Instructors will need to manually enter student Perusall scores into CN GradeBook. 

Step1: Course instructors create the Perusall learning activity. 

If you use the CN Classic LMS, from the Task tool, create a SmartLink and select Launch External Tool. Then, select Perusall.

If you use the CN Pathway LMS,  choose External Tool as the activity type. Then, select Perusall as the external tool. 

Step2: Instructor first clicks through CN to Perusall to set up your Perusall course. 

After creating the Perusall activity in CN, the instructor should click the link to test the click-through process and set up your Perusall course. The screenshot below uses a Pathway course as an example. 

The click-through will automatically create a Perusall account for you. If you already have one, it will connect your accounts. It will also take you to the corresponding Perusall course created for you and your students. This click-through process works the same for your students. 

IMPORTANT: The first time you enter a new Perusall course, you need to set up this Perusall course by: 

• First, on the "Course home" page, go through the setup steps on the top: Get started, Library, Assignments, Students. "Library" is where you will upload your reading files. Make sure each file is clearly named so that students can easily find the right file to read.

• Second, on the "Settings" page, review each settings tab: General, Access, Grouping, Scoring, Advanced. 

Part 3: Perusall as Assignment 

This part will introduce the second way of using Perusall in a CN course -- as an assignment. It takes one step further. Besides handling automated account creation, course creation, and user course enrollment, this approach supports automated assignment score passback. We recommend that you create a Perusall introduction activity following Part 2 to get everything and everyone ready before specific reading assignments.

To create a Perusall assignment in CN, if you use the CN Classic LMS, from the Task tool, create a SmartLink and select "Prompt Students to Submit through External Tool". 

If you use the CN Pathway LMS, select the activity type: Assignment Submission, then choose "Launch External Tool" as the submission type. 

Then, create the connected GradeBook item. You need to make sure 1. the GradeBook item name is exactly the same as the corresponding Perusall assignment name. Perusall provides a feature for instructors to copy each assignment name and paste it into their LMS. You may want to use that feature. 2. Select Perusall as the External Tool. 

Now, you have set up a Perusall assignment! When students click "Make a Submission" (see screenshot below), it will take them to the corresponding assignment in Perusall. After the assignment is completed and graded in Persuall, the score will be automatically passed back to CN GradeBook.

Please note that Persall automatically grades student assignments following their scoring criteria, you may customize the criteria by editing assignment settings. 

Note, if you are going to leverage the assignment score passback, please pay attention to these two score/grade setting options in your Perusall course>>Settings>>Geneal.

If you have "Automatically sync individual assignment scores back to the LMS", according to Perusall, grades are synced to the LMS about once an hour, so it may take an hour or two for a grade update to be reflected in the LMS.

If you ever need assistance with Perusall integration, please check out this general LMS integration troubleshooting page from Perusall or contact CN support help@thecn.com. 

If you already have a Perusall course

If you already have a Perusall course with reading materials, you cannot connect it with a CN course through the External Tool integration. The Perusall External Tool/LTI Tool introduced in this article creates a NEW Perusall course. If you already have a populated Perusall course, we recommend that you take one of the following approaches: 1. If you do not need the automated grade passback, use Perusall as a stand-alone tool by sharing the Perusall course join code with your students to have them self-enroll and then guide them to specific readings. Or, 2. set up Perusall as an External Tool, click through to get into the new Perusall course, then go to Library to copy all of the reading materials from the existing course.