Stop grading margins. Start grading the thinking.

Give every student PERRLA, and formatting stops being something your faculty grade. $9.95 per student per year. Faculty and staff accounts free, for life. Associate-degree nursing programs (ADN and ASN) get PERRLA free, permanently.

Book a 15-minute call Read the case studies

Prefer email? Write to Graysen Pack, CEO, at [email protected]. Programs can start with a free pilot semester and a two-page case study written with your faculty.

Site licenseWhat a program gets
Students
Full PERRLA in PERRLA Online, Word, Google Docs, and the Chrome extension. All three formats.
Faculty and staff
Free accounts that stay theirs, and a sign-in to open a paper's Writing Timeline from its title page
Price
$9.95 per student per year. Associate-degree nursing programs (ADN and ASN): free, permanently.
Rosters
A CSV of names and school email addresses. A seat frees up when a student leaves the roster and goes to the next student.
Writing Timeline
Included at no extra cost
Accessibility
WCAG 2.2 AA. Accessibility Conformance Reports for PERRLA Online and Word

What changes when every student has PERRLA

  • Less faculty time on formatting. Fewer small errors to mark, and less class time spent teaching the manual.
  • Better papers. At Western Washington University, students using PERRLA scored higher on APA than students without it.
  • Nothing new to set up. Students write in Word, Google Docs, or their browser. PERRLA has its own login, so there's no SSO project.
Western Washington UniversityAverage APA score, out of 10
With PERRLA9.5
Without7.5
Nursing students, scored on an annotated bibliography. The case study

No tool replaces learning APA. Students still need to understand why they cite sources and how scholarly writing works. But removing unnecessary formatting friction has allowed us to focus on the purpose of evidence-based writing rather than the mechanics alone.

Whitnie Willis, MSN, RN, Assistant Clinical Professor, Auburn University College of Nursing

As a teacher, I'd far rather have my students spend their time on writing quality than measuring margins and tabs and remembering what parts of a reference are italicized or capitalized.

Elizabeth R., doctoral student and faculty

How a pilot semester runs

A program can start with one free semester. Students begin from a roster, and nothing is signed for them to start.

Before the term

You send a roster: first name, last name, school email address. We send guides for your faculty and for your students.

Week one

Students get a welcome email and sign in. Faculty get free accounts. PERRLA 101 runs live four times a week for anyone who wants a walkthrough.

During the term

Students write in Word, Google Docs, or their browser. If you turn on the Writing Timeline, faculty open it from a link on papers written in PERRLA Online or Word.

End of term

We write a two-page case study with your faculty. Then you decide whether to license PERRLA at $9.95 per student per year.

Results from our partners

Six programs, six different starting points.

Stephen F. Austin State University250 students, one champion

A 6-month pilot with 250 RN-BSN and MSN students cut formatting errors dramatically, freed faculty grading time, and gave students a reliable APA workflow they didn't have to think about. A faculty champion drove adoption at scale, and PERRLA became a core tool in the MSN program.

Western Washington UniversityAPA 9.5 vs 7.5

Faculty stopped teaching citation formatting in class, and the grade data showed exactly why that trade-off worked: 9.5 out of 10 on APA for students using PERRLA, 7.5 without it. 92% of the cohort activated their accounts.

Campbellsville UniversityMade PERRLA required

When Campbellsville required PERRLA in its online RN to BSN and MSN programs instead of offering it, both faculty and students felt the difference by mid-semester. Students wrote 130 papers with 489 references in the first 30 days.

Western Nebraska Community CollegeStudents asked to keep it

A grant-funded experiment with about 125 TRIO students became a permanent site license after the students made one thing clear to leadership: don't take it away.

Galveston CollegeStarted mid-semester

A program director who had used PERRLA in graduate school brought it to her RN-to-BSN students partway through the fall semester. Students who picked it up kept using it: 77 papers and 122 references in one 30-day spring window. The lesson the program took: show students what PERRLA can do at the start.

Moravian UniversityOffered, not required

With a curriculum redesign and an accreditation visit underway, the nursing school simply offered PERRLA, with no mandate and no required training. Its own student surveys did the measuring: 78% would recommend PERRLA, and students asked for it in the first course.

Each case study is two pages, written with the program's own faculty and staff.

Read the case studies

See the work behind every paper

Students already write in PERRLA. The Writing Timeline turns the saves PERRLA already makes into a summary your faculty open from the title page. Nothing new is installed, and nothing new records your students.

A sample Writing Timeline for the paper Bigfoot: The Truth Revealed, by Serena Sparkles: 3 hours 48 minutes of writing in 6 sessions over five days, a chart of the paper growing to 1,694 words, about 425 words removed while revising, and 5 references and 14 citations added along the way.
A sample Writing Timeline: the page faculty open from a paper's title page. The student and the paper are made up.

What faculty see

  • Writing sessions and time worked
  • How the paper grew, including words cut while revising
  • Sources added and cited along the way

Private by design

  • Never shows the paper's text or earlier drafts
  • Day 1, Day 3, never dates or times of day
  • Never labels writing as AI or human

At your school

  • A View Writing Timeline link on each paper's title page
  • Faculty open it with their free PERRLA account
  • Students can turn the link off, and nothing is deleted

The Writing Timeline, explained for students and faculty

For faculty: what to know before the first paper lands

Every faculty member gets a free PERRLA account, for life. These four points are worth sharing before the first assignment is due.

Name the format

Put it in the assignment: APA 7, MLA 9, or Turabian 9, and for APA, a student or a professional paper. Students choose it when they create the paper, and PERRLA formats to it.

What comes in

From PERRLA Online, a Word document or a PDF. From Word, the Word document. From Google Docs, the Google Doc itself. Discussion posts are pasted into your board, as close to the format as the board allows.

The Writing Timeline

If your program turns it on, open it from the link on the title page of a paper written in PERRLA Online or Word. Google Docs papers don't have one. Links stay open for 60 days after the last save.

Questions

Send students to PERRLA Support, every day until 10 PM Central. Your helpdesk handles only school accounts and the roster.

Your account
Free, for life. Yours even if the program's license ends.
Guides
We send guides for your faculty and for your students before the term starts.
Training
Live PERRLA 101 sessions four times a week, and a recorded Advanced Papers session for doctoral cohorts
Students who leave
Keep full access for 30 days after they come off the roster, then can continue on their own plan with all their work

Everything faculty need to know, on one page

Some of the programs using PERRLA

Questions program directors ask

What's the catch with free licenses for associate-degree nursing programs?
There isn't one. We want students to know PERRLA when they go on to a bachelor's program, where PERRLA is paid. The license is free permanently, not a trial and not a discount.
How do students get access?
You send a roster: first name, last name, school email address. Students get a welcome email and sign in with their school address, which is what keeps the arrangement FERPA-clean. A late-enrolling student can start a free trial with their school email and support moves them onto the license.
Does PERRLA need to connect to our LMS or SSO?
No. PERRLA accounts use their own login, students write in Word, Google Docs, or their browser, and there is nothing for IT to install on campus machines beyond the free Word add-in if your labs use Word.
Can students turn the Writing Timeline off?
Yes. One switch on the Title Page panel takes the link off a paper, and turning it off deletes nothing. If your program requires the timeline, students turn the link back on before they submit.
What does the Writing Timeline cover?
Research papers and discussion posts written in PERRLA Online and the PERRLA add-in for Microsoft Word. Papers written in Google Docs aren't included, and text pasted in from somewhere else shows only as a jump in word count. Links stay open for 60 days after a paper's last save.
How do we turn the Writing Timeline on?
Tell us when you're ready. We send guides for your faculty and students, your program lets students know it's coming, and we turn it on for your school. There's no extra cost.
Is PERRLA accessible?
PERRLA Online and the PERRLA add-in for Word each have an Accessibility Conformance Report (VPAT), updated October 2026. Download both from our Help Center.
Who supports our students?
Our US-based support team, by email, every day until 10 PM Central, plus free live PERRLA 101 sessions four times a week. Your helpdesk only handles school-side account and roster questions.

Talk with the people who run PERRLA

A 15-minute call is enough to see PERRLA, the Writing Timeline, and what a pilot semester would look like for your program.

ContactInstitutional partnerships
Email
[email protected], Graysen Pack, CEO and Co-Owner
Case studies
Six two-page PDFs