How to make a workbook for your course
List what students must be able to do after each module, write one exercise for each outcome, and make every exercise produce something: an answer from memory, a decision, a filled-in plan. Follow the order of your lessons, leave real room to write, and deliver it as a PDF they can print or fill in on screen.
Decide what the workbook is for
A course workbook is not your slides with gaps in them. Notes that students copy down record what you said. A workbook should get them to do what you taught, on their own situation, before they’re convinced they can already do it.
Start with your course outline and write the outcome for each module as something you could watch someone do. Then make a table. Here is an invented example for a course on starting a coaching practice:
| Module | Students can… | The exercise | They finish with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your offer | Describe who they help and with what | Rewrite their offer in one sentence, three ways, and test it on a friend | One sentence they’ll use |
| Your price | Set a price and defend it | Work out their cost and hours, then answer the three objections they fear most | A price and three answers |
| Your first calls | Run a discovery call | Script the opening, then record a practice call and mark it against a checklist | A call script they’ve tried |
Any row you can’t fill in shows you a weak spot in the course as well as in the workbook.
Use exercises that make people remember
Research gives some useful direction here. A 2013 review by Dunlosky and colleagues rated ten common learning techniques. Practice testing and distributed practice received its highest overall utility rating, while highlighting, rereading and summarization, some of the most common student habits, were rated low. The review looked at students’ learning techniques in general, not course workbooks in particular, but the lesson carries over well.
In a workbook, that means:
- Ask before you tell. Open a module with questions on the previous one, answered without looking back. Being wrong is fine, because the effort of recalling is the point.
- Bring things back. Have the exercise in module five use what students made in module two.
- Don’t ask them to copy. A blank that can be filled by finding the sentence in the lesson teaches little. Ask them to apply it to their own case.
Exercise types that work
- Worked example, then your turn. Show one finished answer with your reasoning, then give them the same task with their numbers.
- A decision sheet. A few criteria, their options and a final choice, written down.
- A checklist. One at the end of each module, of things they did, not things they read. In the sample on this page, each week ends this way.
- A log. For anything that needs repeating, a small table to fill in daily or weekly.
- Named exercises. “Exercise 1: Your light” and “Exercise 3: Your pots” in the sample tell students what they’ll have when they’re done, which a bare “Exercise 1” doesn’t.
Leave real room, and pick a format
Workbooks often leave too little space. Write the answer yourself, by hand, and measure what it takes. A question that needs a paragraph can’t be answered on two lines.
- Printable PDF. Handwriting suits reflection, and the pages sit beside a laptop while the lesson plays.
- Fillable PDF. Better for numbers and for students who work only on screen. Form fields behave differently from app to app, so test filling in and saving in the ones your students use.
- Paperback. A real object, and a possible product of its own. KDP needs at least 24 pages, and allows no more than 4 blank pages in a row at the beginning or middle and 10 at the end, so be careful with empty pages left for notes. Publishing it under your own KDP account also means answering KDP’s AI question.
Where Chapbook fits
Chapbook’s workbook runs 1,000 to 20,000 words. You can add your course outline, notes or transcripts as sources, up to 10 of them in TXT, Markdown, PDF or DOCX, provided they’re yours to use, and the draft works from those. If you’ve already written the workbook, “I have a draft” brings it in word for word, for free.
Turn on Fillable answers and readers can type on the answer lines and tick the empty boxes in the digital PDF, in any PDF app that fills in forms. The page looks and prints the same until they do. A workbook’s Next step page is on by default and prints once you add a link, and the workbook also exports a KDP-sized paperback interior with a preflight report. KDP’s own previewer and review still decide, so order a printed proof before you publish. The sample on this page was generated from one brief and exported unedited, so you can see how the exercises and checklists are laid out.
What to do
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Write one outcome per module
For each module, finish the sentence “After this, a student can…” with something you could watch them do. “Understand pricing” won’t do; “set a price and defend it” will.
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Match each outcome to an exercise
Write an exercise that makes the student do that thing, with their own situation. If you can’t think of one, the outcome is probably too vague.
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Decide what each exercise leaves behind
Name the thing they end up with: a price list, a shortlist, a script. Students who finish with something useful have a reason to open the workbook again.
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Add recall and return
Open a module with questions on the last one, to answer without looking back, and have a later exercise reuse an earlier result. Both cost little to add.
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Lay it out and test it
Give each answer the room a real answer takes. Then do the exercises yourself, on the device or the paper your students will use, and watch one student try them.
