Responsible use of Perusall

Perusall is a free social reading platform integrated into Moodle which allows students (and teaching staff) to digitally annotate readings and videos collectively (with text, links, and embedded content), and respond to each other’s comments and questions. Perusall motivates participation via social connections and automatic engagement scores. As the instructor, you can engage in the discussion with students, and you also have oversight of the student engagement. You can access a student confusion report — a one-page summary of concepts students had trouble with, or most engaged them, along with some of the best annotations.

Perusall supports a rich and engaging reading experience - if properly used. Perusall can be used in several ways:

Uploading open sourced and unpublished content in the public domain
Purchasing articles and resources directly from Perusall
Using materials by arrangement with the Library/database (for details, contact the Monash Library)
Share publicly listed videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Google Drive or Dropbox

This guide provides copyright and privacy information to ensure the responsible use of Perusall. For information on how to set up Perusall in your Moodle unit, see the Persuall activity guide.

Note: Although Perusall is integrated into Moodle, it is NOT enterprise supported. Any technical queries must be directed to Perusall.

Copyright

Be mindful of content that you place in Perusall and make sure you have the rights to share the content. The best way to avoid any copyright infringement is to use creative commons or open access resources — meaning the resources have a reuse licence, not just that they are freely available online.

Avoid using material such as articles, chapters, blogs etc. that were authored by others and published with copyright restrictions. If you are uploading your own class slides for students to annotate, make sure you do not have any copyrighted content on the slides. Uploading these would make a 'copy' and thus be an exercise of the copyright, which would require permission, a licence or a relevant copyright exception. Even if the resources uploaded to the software platform can be marked as copyrighted, blocking it from being downloaded by students, there could still be copyright issues.

Monash Library resources are not linked with Perusall, so even if we may have a license for the article via the Library, this license does not extend to Perusall use. You would still be required to purchase a copy per student for the resource in Persuall. If you decide to purchase, it is best if the Library contacts the different publishers to obtain permission to use these and at what cost.

Note: Publishers do not allow the use of their materials in Perusall unless each student buys a copy of the text.

Open access (creative commons) resources - this means items with a creative commons or other reuse licence. For websites with such resources see:
- https://guides.lib.monash.edu/CreativeCommons
- Open Courseware and Open Textbooks
- The Open Access Button will search across the web for a freely accessible full-text version of an article
- Unpaywall is a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome, which adds a green tab beside research articles that you can read for free
- DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals
- The OAPEN Library is a central repository for hosting and disseminating OA books, and the Directory of Open Access Books is a discovery service for OA books
- OpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories
- For a list of Open Access Journals with an Australian publisher view here
You may be able to use some online content or print materials under the Educational Copyright licence.
The copying limits must be followed. That is, only 10% of the total number of pages of a book or one chapter and only one article per issue of a journal, can be used. Access must be limited to Monash degree students only. No short course students or the public can have access.
Send a copy of your reading list to the Library Readings and Reserve service, so there is a record of the content used for Copyright Agency and compliance with the licence. This licence will apply to print material and to online content that is not accessed through Monash ebook or eJournal subscriptions.
Publishers will only allow use of ebooks where all students purchase a copy of the textbook. Single chapters can be used under a Reading List. Ejournal articles can be used under a Reading List. (see Resources that can be used by creating a reading list). Access must be limited to Monash degree students only. No short course students or the public can have access.
Subject librarian https://www.monash.edu/library/skills/contacts
Monash University Copyright adviser
University.copyright@monash.edu
9905 5732
Copyright in student work usually belongs to the student. If you want to use this work in Perusall, you must get written permission, such as an email, from the student or use the template permission from students to reuse their works.

Subject librarian	https://www.monash.edu/library/skills/contacts
Monash University Copyright adviser	University.copyright@monash.edu 9905 5732

Privacy

When Perusall is integrated with Moodle, the LMS sends Perusall information about the user and course at launch time. Perusall utilises the following user information: internal identifier, user role in course, name (first, last, full), e-mail address, and profile image (if any). It also collects course information including the internal identifier, course name, assignment name, if applicable, and grade passback information, if applicable.

It is recommended that you advise students that their information will be transferred over to Perusall, but will be kept confidential and will not be shared outside your unit. The information is shared to enable synching with Moodle for Gradebook purposes.

Learning and Teaching: Teach HQ

Learning and Teaching: Teach HQ

Responsible use of Perusall

Copyright

Privacy

Collaborative reading with Perusall

Import Moodle groups into Perusall