UMass Amherst instructors use Perusall, an AI-supported reading platform integrated with Canvas, where students annotate course texts together online. Perusall's AI automatically scores each student's participation — evaluating the quality and depth of their annotations — so instructors don't have to grade hundreds of comments by hand.

Perusall's machine learning model evaluates student annotations against up to seven criteria, producing participation scores without instructor manual review. The model is pre-trained — meaning it was trained before deployment and does not continue learning from UMass student data. Perusall is listed on UMass Amherst's official Canvas LTI integration list as an "AI-supported discussion platform with automated participation grading," confirming its sanctioned deployment. Instructors retain full control over assignment design and can override scores.