How do you motivate your students to read the material before they come to class? The VU has 2 tools specifically designed for this purpose: Feedbackfruits Interactive Document and Perusall. In both tools you upload the reading material of your course. Students read the material together and place annotations directly in the documents. Other students can see this and respond to it. This way students can help each other understand the literature and start discussions about it even before the class has started. This makes online learning more social and students will reach deeper understanding of the reading material.

The way to make students engage with a text, is to have them make annotations. An annotation can be anything from a question, to a summary, to a comment, as long as it helps with the understanding of the text. On this page we will tell you all about the didactics behind the annotation tools Perusall and Feedbackfruits Interactive Document: what value do these tools have and how do you use them effectively? Want to know more about the technical side? Go to the Tools tab on this page.

The way to do this #1:
Before you use Perusall or FeedbackFruits, think for which goal you want to use the tools. Do you want to use the tools for assessment? Or you want to use them for literature in a course.

The way to do this #2:
Explain clearly the purpose of making annotations to students and communicate your expectations with them.

The way to do this #3:
To stimulate students to participate, set a minimum required number of annotations for students. Studies have shown that 7 annotations per article is the best way to go.

The way to do this #4:
Publish the assignment in time so students have lots of time to make good quality annotations and to respond to annotations of others. Do not set the deadline at midnight to prevent students from reading and annotating at night.

The way to do this #5:
Use the challenging topics as input for your lecture or workgroups and continue the started discussions to reach a higher level of understanding among students.

Good practice

Pitfalls

Know with what purpose you want to use these tools and set up the assignment accordingly. Using these tools just for the sake of using them is not a good idea. It should just be a means to reach your goal.
Don't make too many pages of text mandatory for your students. It takes time to make good quality annotations and adding too many pages will overwhelm your students.
Don't interfere with the annotations of students. If students have a question or when they go the wrong way, the tool is not the best way to raise this. Wait and see if other students help them go in the right direction and if not, discuss this topic during a live contact moment.
These tools are not a substitute for synchronous discussion. They are great input to continue the started discussion, but to really reach deeper understanding of the literature a live contact moment is necessary.
Sometimes the discussion doesn't get started or students don't take the assignment seriously. To stimulate discussions it's a good idea to set a minimum amount of annotations that need to be a response to other students. To let students take it more serious, you could give a grade to the quality of work (Perusall helps with this) and let this be small part of their total grade.

Perusall and Feedbackfruits Interactive Document are tools that are perfect to use in an online setting. They add add pedagogical value to your course in several ways:

they stimulate interaction between student-content, student-student and student-teacher;
they stimulate active learning;
they stimulate to think critically about the reading material;
they stimulate social learning;
they give the teacher insight in who prepared for class;
they give the teacher insight in topics that need additional explanation.

Would you like to know more about the pedagogical value of these tools and how to use them effectively? Download the Teaching Techniques below.

Teaching Techniques for Perusall and Feedbackfruits

Student's experience with Perusall

Ik ben er tevreden over omdat je erg betrokken bent met de artikelen die je moet lezen. Denk niet dat ik ze allemaal gelezen had als het geen verplichting was. Dat gaat natuurlijk wel alleen op als je ze goed leest en inhoudelijke vragen stelt/comments plaatst. Vaak ken ik de stof dus al voordat het college plaatsvindt. Pluspunten zijn dus dat je goed voorbereid bent en je, mits iedereen goed emedoet, ook discussies hebt over de stof of naar dingen kijkt met andermans point of view. Minpunt is dat het niet werkt als niemand op elkaar reageert of dat mensen soms puur reageren/commenten om maar iets te plaatsen, dus soms veel nutteloze comments, etc. Soms voelt het ook nutteloos, omdat je geen feedback krijgt op je comments of vragen. Qua systeem werkt het heel makkelijk allemaal.

Teacher's experience with Perusall

Perusall was helpful and popular. Students didn't feel alone when they were doing the readings, and students who understood what was going on could answer clarification questions from students who weren't yet getting it. By the time we met synchronously, we could dive right into the most interesting parts of the discussion and make the most of our time.

Examples of good (and bad) annotations: Examples

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Perusall

Intermediate

Make your content interactive
Promotes social learning
Students can add questions and comments to any document
Dashboard with analytics

Automatic quality estimation of student contributions

Not synced with Canvas groups or gradebook

Interactive documents

Licenced to VU

Intermediate

Make your content interactive
Add questions and comments to any document
Support discussion

Dashboard with analytics
Grade a discussion assignment

Comparison Perusall & Feedbackfruits Interactive Document

Go to the official Perusall FAQ for students

Go to the official Perusall FAQ for teachers and instructors

What is a good amount of annotations for students to make?

Of course, this depends on your material, but according to Perusall this should be around 7 annotations per student.

Where can I get further support for online education?

Fill out this contact form (Links to an external site.) for questions or to set up an appointment with an expert;
Or contact your faculty support.
In case the Frequently Asked Questions do not cover your question, please fill out our contact form.

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VU Quality ambitions for online education