In June 2025, MIT moved from a Canvas LTI 1.1 to an LTI 1.3 for Persuall (see FAQs about the 1.3 transition). This guide is for instructors who want to copy forward a past Canvas course that includes Perusall, and plan to use assignments and materials from that past Perusall course again.

Enable Perusall 1.3 on your new Canvas course
Copy your past Perusall (1.1) course into your new Perusall (1.3) course
Import your past Canvas course into your new Canvas course
Delete old Perusall assignments (ones made on LTI 1.1 in the past)
Optional/as needed: Add new Perusall assignments (ones made on 1.3) to Modules or Pages

Alternative option: Import old Perusall assignments + update links

1. Enable Perusall 1.3 on your new Canvas course

Navigate to your Fall 2025 Canvas course site. Go to Settings and click the Navigation tab.

Click and drag Perusall from the bottom list to the top list (or click the three dots then +Enable). Then click Save at the bottom of the page.

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Perusall (the 1.3 version) will now appear as an option in the navigation menu. Click it to launch Perusall in a new window.

The first time you click into this version of Perusall, you may receive an email asking you to “confirm your request to connect to your existing Perusall account” to the LMS. If so, click Confirm request in that email.

Note: Perusall considers the 1.1 integration you were previously on as separate from the 1.3 integration, so it is confirming you want to add “another” integration to your Perusall account.

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Once you are in Perusall in a new window, you should see a label at the top that says "Created from Canvas (LTI 1.3)."

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2. Copy your past Perusall (1.1) course into your new Perusall (1.3) course

Once you have launched Perusall in the navigation menu and it opens in a new window:

On the ‘Get Started’ tab of your new Perusall course, you will be prompted to go through a series of steps to set up the site. In Step 1: Welcome, select Copy existing course.

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In the Copy from field, choose One of my courses if you are copying a past course where you had the Instructor role. In Courses to copy field below, use the dropdown menu to find the course.

Alternatively, you can choose ‘Another instructor’s course, using a copy code’ if you did not have the Instructor role on the site you are copying, but have been given a copy code for it.

Select all items you want to bring over from the past Perusall course next to the Content to copy (i.e., your Perusall Library items) and Assignments to copy fields.

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In the Adjust all deadlines so the first assignment is due at field, enter the date that your first Perusall assignment will be due, and Perusall will shift dates accordingly for the upcoming term (Note: You may still have to adjust these dates manually after the import).

If you want to preserve annotations left by the instructor (yourself or the instructor of course you’re copying), check off Copy instructor comments from old course to new course.

For example, if you are copying over an assignment where you left discussion questions/prompts for students, you may want to carry these forward. (Note: Student comments do not get copied).

If you had created any rubrics or scoring templates in the past Perusall course that you want to reuse, check off Copy rubrics and Copy scoring templates.

If you want your new Perusall course to be set up the same way as the past course you’re copying (this is recommended - you can always edit later), check off Copy course settings.

Click Continue on the bottom right of the page.

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Click Continue through the next three steps in the setup wizard. You do not need to make any changes to the Starter assignments, Select content, or Student cost steps.

On Step 5: Basic settings, fill out all required fields (*):

Adjust the Start date and End date to reflect the upcoming term.
If you had checked off 'Copy course settings' on the previous page, Scoring and analytics, Release scores to students, and Grade sync to LMS will be pre-populated with the same settings as the course you're copying.
By default, the LMS gradebook column management field will be set to have Perusall automatically create gradebook columns in the Canvas Gradebook for each Perusall assignment. Keep this setting.
Important note: if you have Disable grading, but provide engagement analytics or Disable all analytics as your Scoring and analytics setting, you will not see the LMS gradebook column management field. To allow Perusall to still automatically create assignments in Canvas, follow these steps.

Click Continue.

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Step 6: Ready to go! will confirm that your new course is set up. Click Continue to Library.

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The Library tab should show all materials that you chose to copy over from the past Perusall course.
The Assignments tab should show all assignments you chose to copy over from the past Perusall course, including any instructor comments if you chose to copy those over.

Back on the Canvas site under Assignments, the Perusall assignments should automatically appear. If you opted to adjust all deadlines during the Perusall import process, you should see these updated dates reflected.

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In the Canvas Gradebook, new columns for the Perusall assignments should also automatically appear.

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3. Import your past Canvas course into your new Canvas course

Follow the steps to import a past Canvas site.

If your old Perusall assignments ONLY existed in the Assignments section of the past Canvas site:

Choose the option to Select specific content (2A, step 3b on the page linked above). Then in the ‘Select Content for Import’ window, uncheck the old Perusall assignments to exclude them from the Canvas site import.

If your old Perusall assignments existed in several places on the past Canvas site (i.e., added under a Module):

Choose the option to copy All content (2A, step 3a on the page linked above), if importing the whole site is what you would usually do from one term to the next. Even though this means you will be importing old Perusall assignments made with 1.1, you will end up deleting them (covered in the next section).

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4. Delete old Perusall assignments (ones made on LTI 1.1 in the past)

Ensure you delete any old Perusall assignments that came over in the Canvas course import. They may be located:

A. Under Assignments

Note: If you did not opt to shift due dates for assignments during the Canvas import, it should be easy to identify which assignments are the old Perusall assignments given their past dates.

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If any of these assignments were also posted under a Module, they will be removed from the Module upon deleting them from the Assignments section.

Note: If you plan to add your new Perusall assignments (1.3) to Modules (covered in the next section), you may want to make a note of which Perusall assignment went with which Module on the past site. You can also refer to your past Canvas site to see this organization.

B. Linked on a Page (or anywhere else there is a link to the old Perusall site, i.e. under a Module)

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**5. Optional/as needed: Add new Perusall assignments (ones made on 1.3) to Modules or Pages**

Ensure you add any new Perusall assignments that were created automatically from the Perusall course copy to Modules or linked on Pages, if those are ways you want students to access Perusall assignments other than under Assignments or via the Perusall link in the navigation menu.

Note: With 1.3, students can click on any Perusall link on the Canvas site in order for the grade sync to work (compared to 1.1, where students had to click on the Assignment specific link to enter Perusall in order for the grade sync to work).

Module:

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Page:

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Alternative option: Import old Perusall assignments + update links

The steps above are recommended if you have a lot of Perusall assignments and would benefit from Perusall automatically creating new assignments for you during a Perusall course copy. However, you also have the option of manually updating the Perusall links in assignments that get copied over in a Canvas site import.

You may consider this option if:

You only have a few assignments that need updating after a Canvas import
Your old Perusall assignments in Canvas have instructions/text that you want to carry over (note: You can still follow the steps above and just copy & paste the instructions into the auto-created new assignments)

To carry out this option:

Complete the Perusall course copy (steps above) and change the LMS gradebook column management setting at Step 5: Basic Settings to Instructor creates deep links.
Import the past Canvas site into your new site, including the past Perusall assignments.
For each Perusall assignment:

Click Edit Assignment Settings to open the assignment details.
Under Submission Type: External Tool, click Find > Perusall > Select. Then choose the corresponding Perusall assignment you want to link.
Click Save at the bottom of the assignment page.

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