Perusall allows you to customize a number of course-level settings in order to change how you and your students interact with assigned readings. For example, you can adjust how assignments are scored, turn on email assignment reminders, or write a “welcome message” for students that outlines Perusall expectations for your course.
All of these can be customized in the “Settings” section of your course Perusall site, accessed from a link on the left menu bar. This section is split into five areas: “General,” “Access,” “Grouping,” “Scoring,” “Integrity,” “Terminology,” and “Advanced.” See below for a list of options.
| If you’d like to… | Change this setting: |
|---|---|
| Hide an assignment until a specific date | “Availability period of assignments” (General) |
| Give yourself the option of proofreading or editing grades before students can see them | “Release scores to students” (General) |
| Communicate with your students about expectations for using Perusall | “Welcome message for students” (General) |
| Add another instructor or TA to the Perusall course | “Instructors” (Access) and “Teaching assistants” (Access) |
| Change size of student groups for Perusall assignments (default: 20) | “Target group size” (Grouping) |
| Let students download readings uploaded to Perusall | “Allow students to download all uploaded course material” (Advanced > Library & Assignments |
| Enable emails reminding your students to complete the assignment | “Enable assignment reminders” (Advanced > Library & Assignments) |
| Add decimal points to final scores | “Assignment score precision” (Advanced > Scoring) |
Some scoring settings don’t appear in the general menu but are part of the template created and applied to (a) particular assignment(s). Read more about how to use Scoring Templates.
| If you’d like to… | Change this setting: |
|---|---|
| Determine range of possible points for student annotations | “Score Range” (Scoring > Automatic Scoring > Choose Template to Edit and click Actions > Edit) (default: 0 – 1) |
| Make assignments pass/fail | “Threshold score for credit” (Scoring > Automatic Scoring > Choose Template to Edit and click Actions > Edit) |
The features on the list below all appear on clicking Options in the template comment content area.
| If you’d like to… | Change this setting: |
|---|---|
| Set a standard quantity of required annotations for all assignments (default: 4) | “Students earn full credit on this metric by submitting [##] high-quality comments” (default: 4) |
| Adjust how much credit students receive for annotations based on quality level | “How to award credit” > “Quality-based scoring” (default: Full credit for high-quality comments, Half-credit for medium-quality comments, No credit for low quality comments) |
| Allow students to receive full credit for annotations | “How to award credit” > “Participation-based scoring: full credit for any comment” |
| Set a window for late submissions without a penalty | “Post-deadline reply window” (default: do not allow responses for credit past the deadline) |
| Set a window for late submissions with a penalty | “Late comment period” (default: do not score any late comments) |