Perusall: Collaborative reading tool and online annotation to facilitate reading comprehension

Abstract

Teachers sometimes face the challenge of having their students take the readings assigned pre-class. Perusall is a free online social learning platform to promote the reading and understanding of the contents through the exchange of ideas, problem-solving, and clarification of doubts. It is based on the theory of social constructivism, collaborative learning, the online annotation system, and the student’s commitment to the material in an active, constructive, and interactive way. It promotes the metacognition process of the participants and favors reading comprehension. This platform allows to share content in various formats such as books from the Perusall catalog, web pages, documents from the computer and Dropbox, videos, and podcasts; this allows the development of activities that promote the active learning of students by reviewing and interacting with the content; also, through analytics generated by the platform, teachers can identify the topics that require greater attention and thus plan the design of their classes. This article describes the main characteristics of Perusall, the bases and theoretical principles on which it is based; its main functions and tools; the strengths, limitations, and challenges of its use, and the steps and recommendations to follow for effective use of the platform. It is expected that knowing these aspects, health science teachers will incorporate this tool into their teaching practice since it can be very useful in different teaching modalities to improve their students’ reading comprehension.