Asynchronous Active Learning with Perusall
Back in 2021, I taught a course that was asynchronous online one day a week and found annotation to be an incredibly flexible tool for engaging students in active learning in that teaching modality. See this blog post of mine for lots of practical examples of learning with annotation.
The first asynchronous day of the course, Wednesday, February 3rd, served as the students’ introduction to Perusall. I asked students to read and annotate three recent news articles about surveillance and privacy...
Since this was the students’ first time using Perusall (at least in my course), I suggested a few different annotation “moves” they could make as they read the articles:
What is unclear or confusing about the article? You’re welcome to highlight a sentence or phrase and ask questions about it.
What do you find surprising within the article? You might highlight a passage and comment on why it surprised you.
What arguments presented in the article do you find compelling… or problematic? You might highlight a quote and comment on why you agree or disagree with it.
What connections can you draw between the article and other things we have read or discussed in this course? You can highlight something in the article and comment on the connection you see.