Integrating Perusall (LTI 1.3) in Canvas

Adding Perusall to your Course

To add Perusall to your course, you must first:

  • Enable the Perusall menu item in your course navigation, or
  • create a Perusall (1.3) assignment by creating an assignment and selecting "external tool" as the submission type.

Either way, once you click into Perusall, a window will open prompting you to either create a Perusall account (if you don't yet have one) or authorize an existing account use.

From this point onward, you can create assignments through the Perusall interface (at Perusall.com) and they will sync with your Canvas page.

Roster Sync

Each time you launch Perusall from Canvas, a roster sync is run in the background.  Any students that have added to your LMS course will be added to your Perusall course roster (under the Students tab), and any that have unenrolled will be removed from the course.

Grade Sync

If you would like to automatically sync the average of all Perusall assignments to a single gradebook column in Canvas, launch into Perusall, select Settings > Scoring > Grade sync to LMS > Automatically sync students' average scores to LMS, and then click Save changes.

If you would like to sync individual assignment scores to multiple columns in the Canvas gradebook, launch into Perusall, select Settings > Scoring > Grade sync to LMS > Automatically sync students'  scores to LMS, and then click Save changes.

(For more info, see Grade sync in LTI 1.3.)

Assignment-Specific (Deep links) Creation

Graded

In either case, there is no need to create individual Canvas assignments for each Perusall assignment; however, if you would like to do so, you can create Canvas assignments that are "deep links (assignment-specific links)" into the corresponding Perusall assignment.  Navigate to Settings > Scoring > Grade Sync to LMS > LMS gradebook column management, set to Instructor creates deep links in LMS; no Perusall gradebook columns will appear in LMS until deep links have been created > Click Save Changes.

  1. Create your assignment in Perusall first
  2. Navigate to the assignment creation page in Canvas and select External tool for Submission Type.
  3. Click Find and then click the blue magnifying glass next to Perusall.
  4. Perusall will present you with a list of assignments you have created in your Perusall course; select one of them to match the Canvas assignment with the corresponding Perusall assignment.

Ungraded

If you'd like to create deep links to your Perusall course library items or to assignment, but do not want to have a grade associated with them in your Canvas gradebook, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to your Canvas Modules, and click "+" beside your desired Module.
  2. In the new window, select to Add External Tool, and click Perusall 1.3.*
  3. Perusall will present you with a list of assignments you have created in your Perusall course, as well as your documents from your course library; select your desired item.
    • The URL should automatically fill with the following URL:
    • The page name will be the name of your document/assignment
    • Enable Load in a new tab.
  4. Click Add Item, and then publish it to make it accessible to your students.

*If you do not see Perusall 1.3, contact your Canvas admin, and ask them to ensure they've enabled Link Selection for Perusall 1.3 Developer Key (Canvas Admin Setup).

Canvas Pages and Files

To import Canvas Pages and Files into Perusall, your LMS administrator will need to enable their Canvas API access for Perusall (if they choose to force scopes with the initial install).

  • Once enabled, you can import a Page or document from Canvas by navigating to Course home > Library > Add content and then selecting Page from Canvas or Document from Canvas.

Note

  • Similar to uploading documents from Google Drive and websites, Perusall imports a "snapshot" of the Canvas Page as it exists at the time of import. If you later change the Page in Canvas, that change won't be reflected in Perusall. (Similarly, you can delete the Page in Canvas without affecting the content in Perusall.)
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