Perusall Exchange®

This poster session proposes to provide viewers with innovative approaches to online discussion forums. Faculty and instructional designers will specifically benefit from this poster presentation as there will be a focus on application and examples from the classroom setting. The session will highlight the engaging learning options provided by the Perusall platform and discuss methods in which Perusall can be used to engage learners outside of the traditional format of discussions, such as through asynchronous discussions of course readings. Outside of Perusall, other ideas will include interviews, mind mapping, and online scavenger hunts The session will focus on the power of creativity, engagement, and innovative design in creating a community of learners in the online setting. Conference attendees will walk away from this poster session with specific new ideas that can be incorporated directly into their online classes and engage learners of various levels, interests, and abilities.

In this presentation, we explore how we innovated in the process of institutionalizing Perusall at the University of Murcia (Spain). From a multidisciplinary perspective, the authors have collaborated in the integration of Perusall at both institutional and educational levels under the context of the Covid-19 pandemic which contributed to the acceleration of active and social blended learning models. More specifically, the authors will offer a qualitative-quantitative analysis on the findings obtained from course surveys related to the use of Perusall which shed light on students’ views of actual learning vs perceived learning. Finally, the authors will elaborate on how the institutional implementation of Perusall was key in the problematization of the research principles that inform their recently awarded European Commission Erasmus+ project Innovalab. The main goal of this Erasmus+ project is to create a new tool, which can be integrated/connected with Perusall and that will help and support facilitators in their constructive alignment course designs.

I implement an active learning cycle in an online 4th year undergraduate seminar-based course, integrating the in-class and out of class learning spaces. This course is focused on the recent innovations in gene and genome engineering and regenerative medicine. The students were assigned three scientific publications each week and were required to annotate the assigned literature and discuss the data with their peers using the Perusall social annotation platform. The work was assigned to groups of 4-5 students. The students were encouraged to ask questions, reflect on the data, and share their thoughts. It prompted peer-to-peer learning and I had the opportunity to use the students' responses to inform my instruction. It allowed me to adapt my teaching, I designed the synchronous discussion-based sessions based on the students’ questions and reflection, that occurred outside of class. It allowed me to address misconceptions and gaps in knowledge and helped “tailor” the knowledge transfer to suit that cohort of students. The insights I glean from “peering into the minds” of my students, impacts my teaching not only in this 4th year course, but also in the 2nd and 3rd year courses that establish the foundational knowledge leading to this course. It goes beyond “backwards course design” and in fact enables “backwards curricular design”. The asynchronous group interaction created a sense of community and facilitated social interactions in and outside of class. The students were engaged in conversation and as the semester progressed, more and more students were drawn in, and participated in a meaningful and engaged way. It inspired motivation and engagement, and greatly enhanced their ability to apply the knowledge and get a firm grasp of complex concepts.

Capturing text in every social and individual interaction fuels mechanism to drive learning. Like Perusall services, the method manifested in the proposed tool of the project will integrate the full interactions from reading to voice conversation or discussion. The tool captures all the utterances of every single learner that will help us learn together. "Own voice" democratizes learning opportunities and protects the learner's ownership of oral interaction texts. It promotes a fair share of online word-by-word activity records that ought to belong to each learner, whose data are usually solely held by service providers. Firstly, the browser plug-in-extension retains live captions generated by browser or conference services within the learner's preferred, private storage. Secondly, it ensures all the accumulated assets can, upon permission, fuel learning services, and openness can invite any novel, independent vendors. The example applications merely illustrate real-time learning possibilities. Being OSS promises the unconventional notion that none but learners "own voice."

Anderson School District One experienced district leadership changes, ushering in a team focused on advancing student and teacher learning. The learning team tackled traditional methods of district leadership to focus on transformative practices through social learning opportunities. Within the educational field, best practice centers around the ability of classroom educators to collaborate around essential learnings and make instructional adjustments based on formative learning within the classroom. Many of the school administrators worked as classroom teachers before the emergence of instructional technology. To equip school administrators, the learning team used monthly learning opportunities on best practices from the field utilizing social learning tools to broaden the depth of administrative skills. Traditionally, the monthly meetings focused on presentations about important topics to advance school operations. The learning team redesigned the monthly learning opportunities provided a vehicle for transformative learning of school-level administrators for continuous learning within professional learning communities. Rather than utilize a traditional book study to redesign the monthly meetings, the district learning team uses Persuall and other instructional technology tools to advance the learning from a standard text in a collaborative online space. Administrators engaged in the social learning of transformative practices to promote student learning for all students. The administrators interacted with critical selections from a shared text before the meetings, thus, laying the groundwork for the instruction on best practices to advance student learning within the schools. Tools like Perusall allowed overworked administrators to focus on specific professional texts in an interactive formative by sharing ideas and perspectives from administrators across the district. Often, the traditional monthly meeting provided limited opportunities for administrators to discuss professional learning. Perusuall serves as a means for our district to challenge the teaching of administrators charged with advancing and leading the schools to provide a quality educational experience to every student and prepare them for life beyond the classroom.

Live Keynote Event

In peer instruction, students first answer a challenging problem individually, students then discuss their answer with a partner in the class, and finally students answer the question again. A large body of evidence shows that peer instruction supports student learning. We first examined the cognitive mechanisms underlying the benefits of peer instruction. To determine the mechanism for these benefits, we collected data across the entire semester from six classes, including 208 undergraduate students and 86 different questions related to their course content. For each question, students chose their answer individually, reported their confidence, discussed their answers with their partner, and then indicated their possibly revised answer and confidence again. Students were consistently more accurate and more confident after discussion than before. Initially-correct students were more likely to keep their answers than initially-incorrect students, and confidence in one’s answers partially (but not completely) explained the differences in answer switching. We suggest that the greater accuracy following discussion results from the coherence of explanations during discussion. We also examined whether the benefits of peer instruction persist over long retention intervals compared to social learning in different group sizes. Students answered questions on their own, discussed their answer with a partner, a small group, or the class, and answered the questions again on their own. Peer instruction yielded smaller immediate gains in accuracy than small groups or class wide discussions, indicating that, as the groups grow larger, someone in the group is more likely to have the accurate response and will share it with others. However, when students’ ability to answer is assessed after long retention intervals, questions answered with peer instruction show better accuracy than those answered in small groups or class discussions. These results suggest that students may feel greater personal responsibility for answering and convincing others of their answers when working in pairs;as the groups grow larger, students may engage in greater cognitive loafing and process the material more shallowly. Larger groups may allow students to accept others’ answers without contributing their own reasoning or justification. Peer instruction can benefit long term learning because partner discussions require personal and active engagement with the learning material.

Engagement with primary sources is an essential part of theological study but the scope for engagement by the average student is limited. Many of the historical texts that are central to the development of key Christian doctrines make for dense reading, given their unfamiliar rhetoric and style. Yet there is value in exposing students to primary sources, rather than depending solely on the interpretation of secondary scholarship. Social annotation is a useful tool for sharing this work of engaging a difficult primary text among the students of a class. Here I assigned the entire text of Gregory of Nazianzus' Third Theological Oration for social annotation among a small class of five students studying a unit on the knowledge and doctrine of God. I divided the sections evenly amongst students to summarise so that each student had the opportunity to wrestle with the unfamiliar text sufficiently but still gain a sense of the whole without investing more time than practicable. I also seeded the text with specific questions to research context and reflect on contemporary application. The paper will reflect on the learning of students through the use of social annotation in relation to this specific text, comparing it to previous more traditional uses of the text in class whereby each student read the text on their own and brought questions to class.

The Perusall platform is an easy and effective way to help students tap into their desire to engage socially with course content. It is revolutionizing not only access to content, but the ways in which educators teach. Join Dr. Matthew Winslow, Dr. Travis Martin, and Samuel Lewis, two professors and a student at Eastern Kentucky University. Drs. Martin and Winslow will discuss how Perusall aligns with best practices in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), and Mr. Lewis will provide insights from the nearly half-dozen courses he has taken over the years featuring Perusall. Innovative practices such as ungrading (Blum, 2020), relationship-rich education (Felten & Lambert, 2021), transparency in learning and teaching (Winkelmes, 2016), as well as critical reading strategies (Elder & Paul, 2004) are surprisingly effective when deployed within the context of a Perusall-based course. The discussion will also consider ways in which Perusall reduces anxiety, promotes student-centered learning, subverts unequal access to classroom materials, and facilitates greater faculty-student interactions in both online and in-person courses.

Almost ten years ago, in order to improve the student’s interest and performance, I decided to introduce interaction/interactivity to the biochemistry course at the beginning of the biology curriculum at Université d’Artois, Lens, France. With the members of my team and with the help of the University Service of Pedagogy we used the constructive alignment principle, refined the intended learning targets and re-drafted the teaching program to introduce active learning and an organization of the activities that promotes the participation of all the students and help their understanding. We noticed quite quickly a saturation phenomenon, the success rate did not evolve anymore. Assuming that at least part of the public was still not engaged in a learning process, we decided to introduce specific methods of cooperation between students, which promote “co-learning” (learn-pooling) that I called ‘Bla-Bla Cours’ in the image of ‘Bla-Bla Car’ for carpooling. We gradually adapted the contents of the courses and included interaction, in particular by the use of clicker-questions for formative assessment for large student groups. We also created teaching resources available through the LMS in order to complete the classroom-based work using interactivity. We thought a lot how to implement an innovative way that makes the students learn threshold concepts. The Klaxoon platform we use maximises collaboration within a group, encourages the sharing of experiences and promotes continuous improvement. Thus, ‘Bla-Bla Cours’ is an assembly of asynchronous activities. Each activity is dedicated to one subject/concept and students can engage and contribute according to their inspiration and needs. Klaxoon also turned out very helpful for face-to-face synchronous activities. The students use their device - smartphones, tactile tablets and laptops - to visualise what the teacher presents. For example, the app ‘Meeting’ help to manage lectures. All the activities are displayed in the ‘Flux’ and students can take notes directly on the displayed documents. They can interact and ask questions using instant messages, answer to questions, send complementary information, contribute to word clouds, to brainstorms etc. The global approach was favourably received by the students whose perception has been improved along with their academic results.

The Peer Instruction method, developed by Eric Mazur, today has spread all over the world and is applied not only in STEM subjects, but also in the humanities. Over time this method has also been applied online, with asynchronous tools such as DALITE (Distributed Active Learning Integrated Technology Environment) or PeerWise. With the global shift to online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic, several authors applied Peer Instruction in the online context, with the aim to engage students in the learning process. The 3D Lab Factory of the University of Genoa applied its own online version of Peer Instruction (called OPI - Online Peer Instruction) in the Course of Digital Communication, for students in the second year of the bachelor’s degree in Communication Sciences, with the aim to improve both the engagement of students in online lectures and the understanding of the topics covered. OPI was applied synchronously during the online lectures, using the Microsoft Teams videoconferencing tool together with the learning platform Moodle, in which the phases of the OPI process were performed in real time. At the first poll, the questions posed by the teacher were answered by the students through the Choice activity in Moodle. After the answer they were required to write a few lines of feedback to the answer given by a classmate, randomly extracted by Moodle’s Workshop activity. Next, the students could read the feedback left by a classmate and evaluate which was the best reasoning to answer the question. Finally, the students were required to enter their final answer through a subsequent instance of the Choice activity (final poll). If the rate of correct answers was below 90%, the teacher briefly interviewed a student for each of the incorrect answers, and calibrated an in-depth explanation accordingly. If the response rate was above 90%, the teacher provided a short explanation of the answers, leaving room for any student questions. The results were encouraging: first of all, OPI engaged all the students following the lectures from home in carrying out a learning activity of a social nature. Secondly, the peer feedback process of OPI improved the understanding of the topics significantly: over the whole semester, the correct answer rate increased from 49.9% at the first poll to 71.2% at the final poll. Finally, no additional software was installed: the appropriate setup of Moodle’s Choice and Workshop activities made the OPI process ready to run.

Unit Operations has been taught using an outcomes-based approach at Polytechnique Montréal for nearly ten years. In that time, a certain debate has raged amongst the teaching team: is it really necessary to divulge the average to students following exams and quizzes? Those from a more industrial background see the average as an unnecessary crutch for students, especially in the more authentic setting of an outcomes-based class where one’s position with respect to the average plays no role in determining the final grade. Those with a more academic perspective see divulging the average as a useful pedagogical tool that provides feedback to students and helps them determine if they have attained their learning objectives. To settle this debate, we set into motion a yearlong study during which the average results to tests were withheld, and students were asked to fill in a questionnaire before and after the exam to predict their grade and the class average. The results show that students, especially immediately after a test, are able to adequately predict the class performance, and position themselves with respect to this average. In other words, it may not be necessary to divulge the average to a test. However, this conclusion may be tainted by the fact that Unit Operations is a 3rd year class – students know each other and have a clear frame of reference. It may be pertinent to continue to use the average as a pedagogical tool in the first years of training.

University-level reading can be a challenge and even a shock to many of our students. Of course proficient reading skills are necessary across the curriculum, but as students begin focusing on courses in their majors, they also need the reading skills specific to their particular disciplines (Falk-Ross 2002;Cox, Friesner, & Khayum 2003). We understand this to be one of the hallmarks of being a member of that particular academic discourse community. We also know that students rarely receive any post-K12 reading instruction at all, let alone reading strategies useful for their specific major (Van Camp & Van Camp 2013). Indeed, many of us had to muddle through our undergraduate and graduate careers learning to read effectively and annotated on our own. We see this as a fault of transparency and a needless narrowing of the gate to participating as a member of their academic communities with confidence and authority (Baker, Bangeni, Burke, & Hunma 2019). To bridge this gap at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, we (Inqspot, an initiative designed to create a stronger campus culture of reading;and the CTE, the Center for Teaching Excellence) developed a workshop in which professors and instructors from across the university were invited to share their own discipline-specific reading strategies, model them for students, and then collaborate together with students to practice those reading strategies on a sample text. The workshop was synchronous online and used Perusall and Zoom as the primary platforms, with the hands-on discipline-specific portions taking place concurrently in Zoom breakout rooms. The proposed podcast will include practical explanations of how to use Perusall to facilitate such a workshop at other universities, but it will also include reflections about our successes, challenges, and failures (read: plans to do better next year!). We will include the voices of Inqspot and CTE facilitators, the workshop’s keynote speaker, faculty leads, and student participants. It is our hope that listeners will benefit from our collective learning experience and be motivated to initiate similar cross-discipline collaborative learning workshops and projects.

Peer examination in a real contextual environment. We had obtained (at Instituto Universitario Franco Ingles de México) a really good results with peer examination in a real (laboratory / life) environment. The main idea is to focus the learning process in a common source of data, a peer analysis of information and a disscusion of real variation respect a theoretical model. We choose a specific concept to show in laboratory, like a constant velocity movement, through a simultaneus movement controled by the students and then ask them about a prediction (a collision, for example). After the realization of the experiment they noted that calcultion failed and they start to looking for explanations about what variables they were not take in count and how to include them in the calculation. Another case of successful peer examination was about the measurement process (volume, for example) and the prediction of displacement of a fluid in a container, by a solid object. After the experiment failed they disscused the effect of surface tensión, they didn’t they in count in the calculation and how incluide it for improve the results.We correlated and draw the data time to find the failure in the experiment in two 50 students groups: a) peer’s decisión group;b) instructor’s guided group. Is important to show two common characteristics in students actitud: a) they tried to make adjusts empirically;and, b) manifest a great spectaction and emotion after each recalculation and develop of experiment. In conclusión, the peer examination is a valuable method for solving real life problems.

Peer Instruction has spread in France mainly in higher education and in lectures. In this article, we present a case of application in a French Junior High School with 8th grade students (4e) from a low socioeconomic background, and in the context of a physics laboratory. The multiple choice questions asked the students to provide an explanation to an observed phenomenon in electricity. After the first voting phase, the students were given access to experimental equipment to feed the debate by evaluating the different suggested answers. The use of this double voting process with the MCQs strongly engaged the students in the experimental activity.

Live Keynote Event

This presentation will focus on using Perusall to support a masters’-level flipped-style remote class, “Biological Bases of Behavior for Counseling.” The content for this class is dense and detailed, and mastery requires much time and effort. A complicating factor is that the time and effort vary greatly from student to student, based on their background in and comfort with anatomy and physiology. One lecture during the Zoom-based remote session would promote frustration rather than learning—thus the choice of a flipped classroom format. But flipped alone is not sufficient. As Eric Mazur (2020) stated, “learning is a social experience—it requires interactions and interactivity. This is true not only in the physical classroom, but even more so now that education has moved online.” Having access to Zoom recordings of my lectures (voice over PowerPoint) in Perusall gives students much more time and space to work with the material, and the interactions there have formed us into a vibrant learning community. Students’ posts (questions, shared resources, wonderings, etc.) provide many opportunities for building connections. Each week, I choose content for our Zoom-based remote class discussions based on their interests;as a result, they are engaged every minute. Students have responded very positively to the format of this class. They appreciate being able to work at their own pace and being able to share information with each other. Their interactions on Perusall and during the remote Zoom sessions indicate that they are a close community. I believe it is social learning at its best.

Legal education requires extensive reading, not only of textbooks but of legal cases and materials. Teaching property law and international law in an Israeli college, I’ve been trying out perusal as a tool to improve legal reading practices and encourage active reading habits. I want to share three ideas, some of which can be implemented across other disciplines. 1. Engage students in preparing the reading materials. Most of my reading assignments are case-law and legal articles which are in the public domain. Students read about 60 cases during the course. I added an assignment in which students prepare the reading materials for the class. Last year each group created a “ready” PDF of the cases, annotated and with important passages (according to the students) highlighted – distinguishing between facts, arguments and legal precedents. This year I assigned one case to each student. In addition to preparing the case – the students are “in charge” of the article – they submit a summary and critique and record a short video presenting the case (as this feature is missing on perusal, I use flipgrid.com). Thus, the materials are “owned up” by students, and each assigned file includes credit to the students who prepared the weekly reading. Note: this practice contradicts perusall’s business model. Wide usage of open source/public reading materials might cause a change in terms of usage, and complicate this practice. 2. Specific Legal reading/writing skills. In some weeks I require students to focus on certain aspects of legal reading/writing: e.g., “what argument, do you think, won the case? – identify and argue for your ientification”;“Are the arguments well proved by law and precedent? point out on one well proved argument and one argument whose proof is weak – comment beginning with characterization – strong/weak”;“why did a judge cite from a precedent – comment on the choice to cite, check the citation and explain why these words were cited”;“identify at least three rhetorically strong/weak sentences/arguments – explain why they are effective/suggest a better formulation”. “Comment (only) on explicit and implicit communications between the judges – identify the reason for (dis)agreement”. 3. Perusal as a “legal pad” – purposeful annotation I assign the class a case and ask them to highlight and comment on passages and sentences to use for writing a legal brief and highlight and comment on issues that should be raised and analyzed (without knowing what side they will argue). I ask them to explain each choice in their comment – what will you use this text for? I tell them that in class – I’ll let two perusal reading “groups” compete as legal teams, to encourage them to find the best arguments from the assigned cases. note: The use of perusal for legal textbooks has been discussed by T. Mcfarlin, Using Open-Source, Collaborative Online Reading to Teach Property 64(3) Saint Louis University Law Journal (2020)

The benefits of interactive engagement to learning are well documented (Hake 1998, Freeman et al. 2014). We want every student constructing their knowledge model and receiving timely feedback in every class (Fraser et al., 2014). But there is a major problem: time. How can you possibly give individualized feedback to every student in every class when you have 200 students? Or even just 20? Peer instruction (Mazur, 1999) overcomes this challenge by inviting students to take on the dual role of learner and peer teacher. Why does it work? As Smith et al. concluded “…these students are arriving at conceptual understanding on their own, through the process of group discussion and debate.” (Science 2009). In peer instruction and other team-based learning strategies, the social construct of the course changes dramatically and student success depends strongly on successful interactions within the group. Since the instructor is not immediately present, great care needs to be made to design activities, practices and interpersonal dynamics that facilitate high group performance so that all students flourish and perform. Positive psychology, initiated just over 20 years ago in a landmark speech by Seligman (1998) and discussed further by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000), aims to empirically determine best practices for individuals and organizations to flourish. By applying these positive psychology principles and research, we are able to help teams create their own positive connections and start from positivity and mutual positive regard. We provide a strong structure for team operations but trust teams with considerable autonomy. Intrinsic motivation is key to sustained engagement by all team members and we apply ideas from self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) to encourage it. Every step of the team process is made transparent to the learners, including the overall goal - to help them become an effective and supportive group member (as per Dutton’s high-quality connections). Examples will be pulled from courses ranging from a general interest first-year to a graduate-level course. After this session, participants will be able to i) describe principles from positive psychology relevant for teaching ii) adapt and design course activities to help students form high-quality connections in their groups iii) design an organizational structure appropriate to their course to allow groups to develop into high-performing teams

In this two part presentation, Alan will review strategies for teaching students how to refine and question their search strategies. In Part 2 Ozgur Akas, Mathematics Department Head from Robert College, Istanbul will join Alan to share insights into how to challenge students to apply their knowledge to solve community based problems that make the world a better place.