In a talk held by DBM in T1-302-R1 on March 9, 2022, Dr. Henni Appelgryn shared his experience on “Increasing Students’ Engagement in Class Activities via Perusall” with DBM staff members. The talk aimed to provide support for teachers to enhance learning experiences for students.

Dr. Henni Appelgryn was speaking

Dr. Henni Appelgryn started the talk by introducing Perusall. Perusall is a social e-reader designed by Harvard University professors for engaging students in peer learning via collaborative annotation exercises. It is designed to increase students’ pre-class readings and preparations and inspire students’ participation and engagement of in-class activities.

Audience in the talk

Based on his teaching experience, Dr. Henni Appelgryn illustrated that Perusall could be an excellent tool for instructors to transfer knowledge and interact with the students. Instructors can create assignments that require students to read and annotate texts, answer questions, or participate in discussions. Students can pose questions and get feedback from classmates or the instructor to clarify keywords or concepts on what they are reading. Besides, Perusall analytics create confusion reports to determine which concepts students might struggle with. By addressing these conceptual difficulties early on, instructors can help avoid student frustration and confusion later in the course. 

During the talk, Dr. Henni Appelgryn demonstrated the operation of Perusall and illustrated how instructors could incorporate different functions of Perusall into teaching activities through integrating Perusall with iSpace conveniently. 

During the Q&A session, Dr. Henni Appelgryn interacted with the audience and discussed various issues in terms of the possibility of incorportting Perusall in the team teaching.

 Q&A session