Your First Course

This recipe walks through building a complete course from a single textbook upload. We'll go through all six stages.

Goal

Create a set of course materials (lectures, labs, and assessments) from a textbook PDF.

Steps

1. Upload your textbook — Click "New Course" and upload your PDF. Chelle will process the content (this takes a few minutes for a full textbook).
2. Review the Knowledge Model — Once processing completes, browse the extracted concepts. Look for any major topics that were missed or miscategorized.
3. Accept or modify units — Chelle suggests a unit structure. For a first course, the default suggestions are usually a good starting point.
4. Map concepts — Review the concept-to-unit mapping. Make sure key topics are in the right units.
5. Select activity types — For your first course, try generating a lecture + assessment for each unit. You can always add more activity types later.
6. Generate and review — Let Chelle generate the activities. Review each one and refine as needed.

Tips

• Start with a smaller textbook (or a single section) for your first attempt
• The Knowledge Model review step is the most important — quality here affects everything downstream
• Don't try to generate every activity type at once. Start with lectures and assessments, then add labs and worksheets later