# How I prepare course materials in Obsidian > [!abstract] > I describe how Obsidian has completely changed my workflow for preparing materials for courses I teach. I share my course prep workflow with a focus on creating a course dashboard and converting lecture notes into lecture slides. I have quickly fallen in love with markdown format and Obsidian. I have already shared [[how I built this website]] using Obsidian, and in the months since, I have steadily moved most of my digital world into markdown. At the time of this writing, I am starting a new quarter teaching [[Soil Morphology Teaching Materials|Soil Morphology]] and am challenging myself to do all of my course prep in Obsidian. > **Course materials I am now making in Obsidian** > - syllabus and course schedule > - course dashboard > - lecture notes > - lecture slides > - conceptual diagrams > - assignments, labs, and in class activities I used to do almost all of my course prep in Microsoft Office software because that's what my institution has access to. This works fine, even well in most cases. I wasn't really looking for a change, but when I started using Obsidian to build my website, collect notes, and write, I quickly realized that it no longer made sense for me to keep my course materials outside of my Obsidian knowledge vault. Once my ideas and content related to the courses I teach are in my vault, I can much more easily integrate them into everything else I do here like writing essays and sharing directly to my website. Obsidian is a word processor (and so much more). It is pretty intuitive to switch over basic course materials like syllabi and assignments into Obsidian. >**Two things that have completely changed my course prep workflow:** >- creating a course dashboard >- reformatting lecture notes into slides ## Creating a course dashboard Obsidian is flexible in a way that has been meeting needs I didn't know I had. Obsidian has a built in ["daily note"](https://help.obsidian.md/Plugins/Daily+notes) feature that is completely customizable. I've been using it as a daily homepage where I start and spend much of my working day logging progress as I work through tasks. I decided to apply the same idea to my course by creating a course dashboard. My course dashboard is a one-stop-shop for all things related to the course. I structure it with several sections: ### quick links I use the quick links section to list [internal links](https://help.obsidian.md/How+to/Format+your+notes#Internal+linking) to course materials already in Obsidian that I will need to reference often like the syllabus and course schedule. ### tasks I keep a running task list tagged for the course that shows up in my main task list using the [checklist plugin](https://github.com/delashum/obsidian-checklist-plugin). ### grading log I keep track of the assignments I need to grade. It's easy for me to lose track of this so it's nice to have it up front, but separated from my overall task list. ### scratch pad I use this section for random fleeting notes that I might normally write on a post it. I think of this like a working memory where I can write down things I'll need to remember but don't have another formal place to store. For example, I made a quick note about a road closure for a site I was planning on using for a field trip. ### ideas to come back to This section is intended for more significant course-related ideas that I want to come back to. This might be an idea for an assignment, a reading I came across, or anything else that I want to remember and return to at a later date. ### index of course materials I use this section to list [internal links](https://help.obsidian.md/How+to/Format+your+notes#Internal+linking) for all relevant course materials that I have also created in Obsidian for easy access. This includes lecture notes, lecture slides, labs, assignments, and in class activities. >The course dashboard limits distractions by linking everything I need in one place so I don't have to go looking for files and end up getting distracted by another task or email. When I sit down to prepare my course materials, I know exactly where to go and I can trust that my dashboard will remind me of where I left off and what I need to do next. This ease of access makes course prep much more efficient. I also find this approach to be more fun and satisfying because I see the index of materials building in a tangible way, and I know that I can use the course content I spent so much time and effort creating in new ways now that it is better integrated with the rest of my work. ## Converting lecture notes into slides I have been enjoying the course dashboard and making course materials in Obsidian so much that I wanted to find a way to create my lecture slides here as well. This is a challenge. I've been making my lectures in powerpoint for years. They are full of photos and graphics that I have put a lot of effort into curating. Then comes the added challenge of making slides in markdown format. There are some core ([slides](https://help.obsidian.md/Plugins/Slides)) and community ([advanced slides](https://github.com/MSzturc/obsidian-advanced-slides)) plugins that allow you make and preview slides directly in Obsidian. I tried both with some success, but found that I was spending a lot of time tweaking the formatting, getting the code right, and even so my slides still weren't looking any cleaner than what I could make in powerpoint. I did not want to spend MORE time making slides in Obsidian just for the sake of *"doing everything in Obsidian"* when I already have perfectly good slides in powerpoint. I am, however, drawn to a streamlined workflow where I can convert my lecture notes directly into slides. Converting lecture notes into slides meant I first needed to have clean, complete, and well-articulated lecture notes. If that's all I could do, it would already be an improvement to my unorganized lecture notes from years past. If I could figure out a way to easily convert my markdown lecture notes into slides, then I could spend more of my course prep time improving the notes (and therefore the content of the lecture) and less time wrangling the slides. This is what I'm after - in the end, I want my course prep workflow to help me improve my courses. After lots of trial and error, here's my current workflow for preparing lecture slides from lecture notes in Obsidian: ### Create complete lecture notes in a standard format I begin by creating a complete note for the lecture with headers (H1) for the title of each slide. I add the content beneath the header and write it in a way that it will appear on the slide. I make use of bullets, call out boxes, photos, and diagrams (that I make in [excalidraw](https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin) directly in Obsidian). I add [footnotes](https://help.obsidian.md/How+to/Format+your+notes#Footnotes) for all references and photo credits. The footnotes are especially useful because it automatically hyperlinks throughout the document when exported, so my reference list is always up to date. It has taken a little practice to learn how many lines I can fit on one slide, but I typically organize my slides with one main idea (title), a maximum of three bullet points, and either a call out box or a photo/diagram. Simplifying the types of slides I can make helps me focus on the content while being careful not to overload a slide with too much text. I [resize the photos](https://help.obsidian.md/How+to/Format+your+notes#Resizing+images) after dragging them into my vault. Each slide only gets one photo, and that seems to be enough. I don't worry too much about formatting at this point, I just try to keep each section simple and to the point. Once the lecture notes are complete, I make a copy of the note to modify for the lecture slides export. That way, I can add additional notes to myself as I further prepare and develop the lecture that go beyond the simple bullet points and headers that my students will see on the slides. ### Create a custom css snippet for slide formatting I created a custom [css snippet](https://help.obsidian.md/How+to/Add+custom+styles#Use+Themes+and+or+CSS+snippets) that controls the slide formatting. I toggle on the snippet when I am ready to export the lecture notes into slides. I am still learning the css syntax and created the snippet based on several other snippets folks had posted on the Obsidian forum. >Here are the slide formatting features I included in the snippet: > >- increase font sizes for all text (headers, main text, callouts) >- custom colors for text and call out boxes >- add automatic page break after each H1 and H2 header (this creates a new slide for each header) >- automatically center photos (I found this looks better on slides than the default left justified) ### Export notes as a landscape pdf I export the note as a pdf with the landscape format toggled on. I take a look at the outcome and make any additional adjustments (resizing photos, adding manual page breaks if needed, etc). This usually takes a few rounds, but I imagine this will get faster and easier with time as I get better at estimating the amount of content that can fit on each slide. I reexport if needed. And, that's it! Now, I have a clean, well formatted lecture notes that I can reference and share, along with lecture slides that are derived directly from those notes. Nothing ever goes missing, all references and footnotes are automatically embedded, and it just feels good not to duplicate effort just because I need to make content in different formats. I am so happy with this workflow, I may never go back :) > [!note] Thank you! > If you found this useful, please consider sharing and [[contact me]] to let me know! *written January 11, 2023*