Perusall is an extra platform for online learning that VU Amsterdam has licensed to support active blended learning. Perusall enables you to annotate learning materials: providing thoughtful comments to articles that you have to read.
The VU license for Perusall will expire on 31 August 2026. For more information and migration support, please go to Phasing out Perusall at VU Amsterdam.
Study together (formative use)
Your teacher can assign you to groups of students that can study online learning materials together. You can make and respond to comments that help you and your fellow students to study the materials closely and to deepen your understanding, for example by asking clarifications, asking examples, explaining concepts more fundamentally etc.
Gain credit (summative use)
Your teacher can assign you to groups of students that can study online sources together, but also assign you to make a minimum number of comments. The teacher can decide to assess the quality of the comments, the timeliness of the commenting and your time reading (opening) the reading materials. These characteristics have shown to be predictive of study succes1.
The teacher can decide to incorporate your study achievement in Perusall into your final grade. This is comparable to assigning credit in for example regular group work.
Automated scoring
You may notice that Perusall is able to calculate an effort score for you automatically. The score can be (at the discretion of the choice of your teacher) composed of various weights regarding the quality, timeliness, quantity, and distribution of the annotations. Read about how annotations are used in a calculation in the document on this page 'For Students: How Perusall Works'. In practice, it is not that hard to gain a sufficient level of achievement for credit gaining purposes.
You may also notice that the quality of your comments is scored in an automated way. For that purpose, Perusall and Harvard University (English language) and the University of Groningen (Dutch language) have trained and calibrated the system by having hand-scored a 1000 comments. Providing high quality comments is not per se difficult. Read the document on this page with scoring examples.
Privacy Statement VU Perusall
VU Amsterdam takes your privacy seriously. Read our privacy statement (see document on this page) for details.
Notice that teachers must always check the correctness of the grading of Perusall and you have the right at all times to let your teacher explain how the scoring works and the quality of the individual scores on your annotations.
Perusall FAQ
Do you have further questions? Problems using Perusall? Contact your teacher or visit the FAQ on Perusall's website.