Start with the right to use it
Only upload a chapter you have the right to use that way. That is clearest for text you wrote, openly licensed textbooks whose licence permits it, and material your school or district has licensed on terms that allow it. A commercial textbook PDF is not automatically yours to feed into a tool because you have a copy. If you are not sure, ask your department head or the publisher. Do not try to get around protection on a locked file; if it will not open normally, it is not one to upload.
A chapter is built for coverage, not mastery
Textbook authors have to include everything a board might ask about, so a chapter on cell division gives the same weight to a footnote on a historical experiment as to the stages of mitosis. You do not teach it that way, and practice built evenly on all of it will not match your pacing. Before you upload, decide the five or six ideas students must leave with, and let the upload be about those.
Cutting a chapter down
One upload becomes up to 10 skill packs, and each pack is built from a limited slice of the text that teaches that skill. A thirty-page chapter in one go spreads thin. Better to split it:
- Open the chapter PDF and note the section breaks, usually the subheadings.
- Print or save the pages for one section as their own PDF, two or three sections per file at most.
- Upload each file separately to the same course, so the packs stay together and can be put in the order you teach them with Reorder.
Skip the parts you will not assess: the chapter opener, the biography box, the "Did you know" sidebar. Fewer pages in means sharper skills out.
What the textbook layout does to extraction
- Two columns. Text can read across the columns instead of down them, which scrambles a sentence. Skim a page of the output skill pack for oddly joined phrases.
- Sidebars and captions. They are text, so they are read, but they can land in the middle of the surrounding paragraph.
- Figures, photos and diagrams. Not read. A caption that says "Figure 4.2" tells the software nothing; what the figure shows has to be in the paragraph text.
- Bold vocabulary. It extracts as ordinary words; the formatting is lost, the definitions are kept.
- End-of-chapter questions. They are part of the source, so they signal what the authors consider testable.
Scans. Try to select a sentence in the PDF with your cursor. If you can highlight words, it is real text and extracts well. If you cannot, it is a picture of a page. ClassSense attempts text recognition on such pages but it makes mistakes on curved page edges, small print and photocopies of photocopies, and those mistakes can end up in the questions. Use a clean digital file where you can.
Reading level
Textbooks are often written above the grade they are sold to. Set your course's grade level accurately: it shapes the language of what is generated. Each skill pack also explains at three depths, so a student who finds the chapter's wording hard starts with an everyday-language version before moving to the full terminology.
Where it does not fit
This does not replace reading the chapter. It is practice and tracking on top of what students read and you teach. Anything that depends on a graph, map or photograph will need you to describe it in words or supply it yourself, and the practice questions are written by an AI, so check them against the chapter before students see them.
Common questions
Can I upload a whole textbook?
Upload sections instead. One upload becomes at most 10 skill packs, so a few focused sections give better skills than a whole book spread thin.
Is it okay to upload a commercial textbook chapter?
Only if you have the right to use it that way. Your own writing and openly licensed books are the clear cases. For anything else, check your licence or ask the publisher.
Are the textbook's chapter review questions reused?
They are read as part of the source, which hints at what the authors consider important. The practice questions are written by the AI for each skill, and you should read them before students do.
What about chapters in another language?
That is untested. Upload a short section, see what comes back, and judge for yourself before committing a unit to it.