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Perusall · social annotationPerusall annotations: what Silent Student does, and what Perusall checks
Perusall is a social annotation tool your instructor links from Canvas. Silent Student, a Mac and Windows desktop app from $11.99 a month, opens the assignment, posts comments and replies on the reading, and plays assigned videos and podcasts in real time. Perusall scores that work, and its Audit shows your instructor comments that were pasted or entered unusually fast.
Does Silent Student work on Perusall?
Yes, for standard reading, video and podcast assignments, with limits. Silent Student, a Mac and Windows app from $11.99 a month, opens the assignment from your Canvas course, posts comments and replies on the reading, and plays assigned media in real time. It runs on a general vision agent. Perusall has no submit button for these assignments, and your score comes from Perusall once your instructor releases it.
| What it works | Standard Perusall assignments opened from Canvas: comments and replies on readings, and videos and podcasts played through in real time. Edpuzzle videos are played the same way, at normal speed. |
|---|---|
| How work is saved | Perusall has no submit button for standard assignments. Its help says a posted comment “is automatically saved and tracked toward your score.” Perusall help |
| Approval step | None. The app posts comments to Perusall directly, so read the run log for what it wrote. |
| How it knows it finished | There is no done page to read: Perusall keeps a reading assignment open until the deadline. The run log lists what it posted; your score appears when your instructor releases it. |
| What it doesn’t do | Perusall quizzes, checkpoints and peer review uploads are untested. Assignments marked No AI are yours. |
| Plan | Covered by Base ($11.99/mo), Plus ($24.99/mo) and Pro ($49.99/mo). Pricing |
| Last checked | October 20, 2026 |
How does Perusall grade your comments?
With a score your instructor configures. Perusall’s student help says your grade is calculated using “up to seven different components,” and your instructor picks which count. They include comment content, opening the assignment more than once, reading, watching or listening to the end, “Active engagement time,” getting responses and upvoting. Comment quality comes from “a machine learning algorithm” trained on comments scored by expert human graders, and your instructor can override any score. Packback’s Curiosity Score works differently: its AI scores every post out of 100.
Sources: Perusall Help Center, How scoring works (for students); Perusall Help Center, How is comment quality defined in Perusall?, checked October 20, 2026.
Can Perusall detect AI or pasted comments?
It flags some patterns, and your instructor decides what they mean. Perusall’s instructor help describes an Audit that automatically flags “Comments where content was pasted in,” comments “submitted in a timeframe significantly faster than a typical person could type,” exact duplicates, and text that may not be valid English. If your school set it up, Perusall also checks comments with Turnitin. Perusall says the Audit “does not determine whether or not a student has violated your specific course policies,” but from it an instructor can stop a comment from earning points or give a 0 for the assignment. Silent Student does not hide from or get around any of these checks. Packback, a different discussion tool, checks posts for AI-generated text itself; see does Packback detect AI?
Source: Perusall Help Center, How does Perusall help promote academic integrity in my course?, checked October 20, 2026.
Which Perusall question types does Silent Student handle?
Perusall calls these assignment types. Rows marked Not tested have no run behind them yet.
| Question type | Handled | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Comments and questions on a reading | Yes | Posted in Perusall’s comment box, one at a time. |
| Replies to classmates | Yes | Same comment box as a new comment. |
| Video and podcast assignments | Yes | Played in real time, then commented on. |
| Checkpoints (instructor prompts) | Not tested | |
| Perusall quizzes | Not tested | Save my work and Submit my responses. |
| Peer review, fishbowl and instructor review uploads | Not tested | Uploading your own document. |
| Standalone Perusall course (course code, no LMS) | Not tested | The tested path starts from Canvas. |
What won’t it do on Perusall?
Perusall runs on the general vision agent. Here is where that matters.
- No Perusall-specific solver. Perusall runs on the general vision agent, which reads the screen. It is less predictable than a dedicated solver, so read the run log.
- No receipt to read. A standard Perusall assignment has no submit button and no done page, so a run cannot confirm your score. Check My Scores once your instructor releases grades.
- Quizzes and peer review are untested. Perusall quizzes, checkpoints, and peer review or instructor review uploads have not been tested. Expect to do those yourself.
- Long media means a long run. A one-hour podcast plays for an hour. Closing the agent’s browser stops the run, and comments come after the listening.
- Your instructor sees the Audit. We make no claim about what Perusall’s Audit flags for comments Silent Student posts. Your instructor sees every flag and decides.
- Your course’s AI level applies. If the assignment shows the No AI level, using Silent Student on it breaks your instructor’s rule. Do that assignment yourself.
How much does Silent Student cost for Perusall?
Every plan includes Perusall, billed monthly: Base is $11.99, Plus $24.99 and Pro $49.99 a month. There is no free plan. Perusall’s own fee, if your course has one, is separate.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Base | $11.99 a month | 1× monthly usage pool |
| Plus | $24.99 a month | 2× usage and the advanced pro model |
| Pro | $49.99 a month | Unlimited usage (fair use) and the pro model |
See Silent Student pricing and plans and the guarantee.
Guides for Perusall
- What do Canvas, McGraw Hill, Pearson, Cengage and IXL say about AI tools?The exact Terms clauses on bots, AI agents, browser extensions and login sharing for every platform we cover, with section, date and source, plus what McGraw Hill, IXL and Pearson changed in 2026.
What does Silent Student do on Perusall?
Perusall readings, videos and podcasts opened from Canvas: comments and replies posted on the reading, media played in real time.
Comments on the reading
It reads the assigned pages and posts comments and questions in Perusall’s comment box, one at a time.
Videos and podcasts in real time
Assigned media plays at normal speed in the agent’s browser, which keeps running while you use other windows.
A fresh page after long media
After a video or podcast longer than ten minutes, it reloads the assignment before it types, so Perusall saves the comment.
Honest when it stops
A run that posted some comments and then got stuck is reported as partial, with what it posted listed, never as done.
How does Silent Student work on Perusall, step by step?
Pick the assignment in Canvas
Open the Silent Student desktop app, find the Perusall assignment in your Canvas course list, and queue it.
It opens Perusall from Canvas
The app follows the assignment’s own link out of Canvas into Perusall. It does not ask for a Perusall password.
It reads, watches or listens
The vision agent reads the document, or plays the video or podcast in real time, before it comments.
It posts and reports
It posts comments directly, with no approval step, then lists in the run log what it posted. Perusall scores the work.
Does Perusall use AI?
Yes, in tools your instructor controls. Perusall’s help calls its comment scoring “a supervised machine learning approach to automatically grading comments and questions,” and instructors can use generative AI to suggest discussion prompts and quizzes and to summarize student questions. Perusall says “Student and instructor data is never sent to model providers” and that AI use is “always optional” for instructors. Instructors can also show an AI Assessment Scale level on each assignment, from No AI to Full AI, so check it before you start.
Sources: Perusall Help Center, How does Perusall use AI?; Perusall Help Center, How does Perusall help promote academic integrity in my course?, checked October 20, 2026.
Does Perusall track reading time?
Yes, as one scoring component. Perusall’s student help lists “Active engagement time,” described as “Credit for spending time actively interacting with the content.” Your score breakdown shows active engagement time, the content you read, watched or listened to, and your assignment work sessions. Whether time counts toward your grade is your instructor’s choice.
Source: Perusall Help Center, How scoring works (for students), checked October 20, 2026.
When does a Perusall grade show up in Canvas?
After your instructor releases it. Perusall’s help says courses “are set to release scores manually” by default, and “grades will only sync after they have been released in Perusall.” With Perusall’s older LTI 1.1 connection, a grade syncs only if you open the assignment from its own link in your LMS, not from a general Perusall link. Silent Student opens the assignment from its own Canvas link.
Sources: Perusall Help Center, When will I see grades?; Perusall Help Center, Why aren’t my grades syncing back to the LMS?, checked October 20, 2026.
Does Perusall cost money?
It depends on your course. Since July 6, 2026, Perusall asks instructors to pick a student access fee for a new course when the school has no license and no book from the Perusall catalog is adopted; courses set up before that date are not affected. If your instructor adopted a catalog book, you pay the publisher’s ebook price. Students who pay their own fee get “a 14-day grace period” from the course start date, and instructors can exempt students for financial hardship.
Source: Perusall Help Center, The Course Choice Model: What is the cost of Perusall?, checked October 20, 2026.
What do Perusall’s Terms say about automated tools?
Perusall’s Terms of Service, last updated February 26, 2025, say you may not “access or search or attempt to access or search the Service by any means (automated or non-automated) other than through the currently available, published interfaces that are provided by Perusall.” They also say you will not post content that “violates any school or other applicable policy, including those related to cheating or ethics.” In our reading, those clauses can reach Silent Student. We are not lawyers. Read the Terms, and the assignment’s AI level, before you decide.
Source: Perusall Terms of Service, checked October 20, 2026.
What does Silent Student do after a long video or podcast?
It reloads the assignment before it types. In July 2026, two Perusall runs posted comments on a page that had been open for about half an hour; the comments showed on screen, but Perusall never saved them. Since then, after any video or podcast longer than ten minutes, the agent reloads the page before it types, so the comment goes to a page Perusall will save.
Perusall FAQ
Is Silent Student made by Perusall?
No. Silent Student is made by El Dorado Ignition LLC and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or certified by Perusall LLC.
Does it work with Perusall in Blackboard, Brightspace or Moodle?
Perusall connects to those LMSes too, and Silent Student has its own modes for Brightspace, Blackboard Learn Ultra and Moodle. Perusall through them has not been tested. Canvas is the tested path.
Related platforms and tools
Platform pages and free tools related to Perusall.
Sources
Updated . Every page below was checked on October 20, 2026; each answer above names the page it quotes.
- Perusall Help Center, How scoring works (for students)
- Perusall Help Center, How is comment quality defined in Perusall?
- Perusall Help Center, How does Perusall help promote academic integrity in my course?
- Perusall Help Center, How does Perusall use AI?
- Perusall Help Center, When will I see grades?
- Perusall Help Center, Why aren’t my grades syncing back to the LMS?
- Perusall Help Center, The Course Choice Model: What is the cost of Perusall?
- Perusall Terms of Service
- Perusall Help Center, How do I submit my assignment?
Silent Student is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or certified by Perusall LLC. Perusall is a trademark of its owner, used here only to describe the software this product works with. Silent Student promises no grade or academic outcome; you are responsible for reviewing what is submitted under your name and for your institution's academic-integrity policies.
Queue a Perusall assignment from Canvas
Queue the assignment from your Canvas course and read the run log for every comment it posted.
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