If you've already created a textbook, used it in the past, and want to reuse it for another semester, this is the guide for you. In 4 easy steps, we're going to show you how to create a new version of your textbook, ready for the next semester, along with making any changes you think worthwhile:
Creating a New Version of your Textbook
Re-Adopt Your Textbook
Making Updates
Installing Your New Textbook Version in your LMS
And at the end, we answer some frequently asked questions.
Meet Blended AI. As you work through this guide, Blended AI is available 24/7 in your Control Center — click the Blended AI tab on the right edge of the screen. Ask it how to do any step in this guide and it will walk you through it. Because it can read your class data, it's especially useful when preparing for a new semester: ask it things like "Which quiz questions did my students struggle with most last semester?" or "Show me average scores by chapter."
This guide is for a later term. If instead you need a second textbook running at the same time as your current one — because you're teaching another section that has its own LMS course — that's a different setup. See A Guide to Teaching Multiple Sections.
1. Creating a New Version of your Textbook
To use your textbook again, we are actually going to make a new version for the coming semester, based on the previous version. Why?
This will allow you to have a clean textbook, without the data from previous classes corrupting your analysis and insights.
It will allow you to make incremental improvements to your class for the coming semester.
If you are integrated, you can't reuse an old textbook in a new LMS shell. It won't work. You need a new version of the same textbook.
A new version replaces the current one. Only one version of a textbook can be active at a time, which is why the dates cannot overlap — the new version takes over and students on the previous version lose access. That's exactly what you want for a new term, and it's also why a new version can't serve a second section running alongside your current class. For that, see A Guide to Teaching Multiple Sections.
To make a new version:
Go to the Control Center of your existing textbook that you want to create a new version of, and go to the Settings page.
Scan down until you find the box titled Create New Version and click the blue button + Create New Version
Review and, if necessary, update the Version Name. We recommend that this match the name of your class.
Review and, if necessary, update the Internal Name. This is entirely up to you.
Update the Start Date and End Date for access to this version of the textbook. Important: These cannot overlap with your previous version. The Start Date should be the date from which the class is available in your LMS for students. This is usually slightly before the start date of the course.
Select an Academic Period.
Click Create New Version.
You've now created a new version of your textbook. This uses the same links as your previous textbook. After the Start Date that you set in this new version, when a student attempts to access the Blended Teaching content in your LMS using the existing links (no need to change them), our system will direct them to your new textbook rather than the old one.
2. Re-Adopt Your Textbook
Your textbook keeps the same Textbook Name and ISBN from one version to the next, so there's nothing new to set up there. You do, though, want to re-adopt it for the coming term so your bookstore is ready and your students can get access from day one. It's worth doing this early — bookstores often need a little lead time.
Depending on how your university handles it:
Let your bookstore know you're running the course again this term. If you'd like a ready-made note, the New Class Launch Guide has an introduction email to the bookstore you can copy.
Using a university inclusive-access system (such as VitalSource / Verbasoft)? Confirm your textbook is listed for the new term — search for your Textbook Name, which starts with "Blended Teaching."
You can find your Textbook Name and ISBN on the Settings page of your Control Center — or just ask Blended AI and it'll pull them up for you.
3. Making Updates
Now you have a new version of the textbook, you can make changes to it without it impacting the existing / historic textbooks. With another semester of experience under your belt, do you have any changes you want to implement? Here are some areas you may consider updating.
3.1. Dates for Assessments
Remember to update your Start Dates, Due Dates and End Dates for your assessments in your new textbook, along with the Results Display settings if you reveal the answers after the Due Dates. You don't want to get tripped up at the start of the semester by having all the Due Dates being in the last semester!
A good habit is to finalize your dates before you install the new version in your LMS (Step 4), so everything carries across correctly the first time.
3.2. Content
Was the amount of content right for you? Did you get feedback that there was too much, or perhaps not enough? If so, you can change the flow and amount of content in the Course Structure page of the Control Center.
3.3. If You Change Your Content, Update Your Quizzes and Exams
Your quizzes and exams are built to match your course structure — so if you add, remove, or reorder chapters, take a moment to bring your assessments in line with the new structure. For example, if you move a module to after the mid-term, you'll want its questions to move from Exam 1 to Exam 2 as well.
The good news: because pre-built exams are constructed from Pools (random selections of questions drawn from chapter-specific Question Banks), updating them is quick — you remove or add the Pools for the affected chapters and rebalance the question counts. No need to rebuild anything from scratch.
These two guides show you exactly how:
How to Update Exams After Reordering or Changing Course Modules — the step-by-step workflow.
How to Use Pools — a short primer if you're new to Pools.
3.4. Quizzes
Here are some things to consider for the coming semester related to quizzes and exams.
Start by reviewing the Analytics for each of your Quizzes and Exams. The Analytics pages for each will demonstrate which questions students struggled with (based on the difficulty index), which were valuable (based on discrimination index), and which were too easy. You can also simply ask Blended AI — for example, "Which questions on Exam 2 had the lowest scores?"
To access quiz analytics, go to the Quizzes page of the Control Center, find a quiz you want to review, click on the 3 dots to the right and select Analytics from the drop down.
Once you've reviewed the analytics, adjustments to consider include:
Were the point allocations appropriate
Were there enough, or too many questions in each quiz and exam
Were the time limits sufficient for timed assessments
Are multiple attempts or single attempts preferable
Are there questions to remove or add to the pools — see How to Use Pools
Do you want to add more practice quizzes and practice exams
3.5. Assignments
Based on your experience of the last semester, here are some questions worth considering:
Were there too many assignments or would you want more?
Is it better to do them as in-class group activities, or as out-of-class activities?
Did you have a good mix of assignments, or would you prefer to change them up?
Each year we update the questions in the assignments, so the ability to cheat through sharing answers is somewhat limited.
3.6. TA and Instructor Access
Data privacy is very important. Your new version of the textbook will provide access to the same TAs and Instructors as the previous version. We recommend to review those who have access, and remove those who no longer need to access private student data.
To remove Instructors and TAs from your Control Center:
Go to the Settings page
Click on Instructor Management
Review the list of instructors with access and click Remove on any necessary.
Click Remove Instructor on the pop up.
3.7. Proctored Quizzes and Exams
Already using Respondus in Canvas? If you copy your previous semester's Canvas course forward (Step 4.1 below), your Respondus Wrapper Quizzes copy with it and keep working — there is nothing to rebuild. You just need to update their availability dates to match your new version. See Repeating the Course Next Semester in the Respondus guide.
If you proctor your quizzes or exams and you are installing your new version into a fresh LMS course, set this up now — before you install — so that everything is generated correctly during installation.
Blackboard with Honorlock: Honorlock can proctor Blended Teaching quizzes by registering them as third-party exams — see the Honorlock guide. Loop in our support team the first time you set this up and we'll help you confirm everything is configured correctly.
Other LMSs and proctoring tools: you can export your exams from Blended Teaching and run them natively in your LMS, which unlocks your institution's full proctoring toolkit. Our Guide to Proctoring Blended Teaching Quizzes: Options for Every LMS walks through the options for each LMS, and Exporting Quiz Questions to Your LMS covers the export step by step. If you'd like a hand at any point, Blended AI can connect you to our team.
Honorlock is a little different: because Honorlock exams are registered inside Honorlock itself with that term's dates, you register them again for the new term rather than copying them forward.
4. Installing Your New Textbook Version in your LMS
Now that you've made updates to the new version of the textbook, it's time to install the new version of your textbook in your LMS.
You have two methods for installing the new version of your textbook:
Copying across your previous class in your LMS
Starting from scratch
4.1. Copying across your previous class in your LMS
If the new version of your textbook is similar to the previous version, it's fastest to simply copy your old course using your LMS. The instructions for this will vary depending on your LMS, and they will be available from your LMS provider.
If you are using Canvas, you will need the Blended Teaching App installed before you copy across your old course. To check if the Blended Teaching App is installed, follow this guide. If it is installed, carry on. If not, contact your LMS administrator and ask for them to install it in your class.
Go into your LMS, and copy the last version of your class in your LMS. All versions of your textbook (new and old) use the same links (URLs), so you can leave the old links in from the previous version of the class. The links will automatically direct students to the latest live version of the textbook (as determined by the Start Date and End Date that you've set for each textbook).
If you made some minor adjustments to the content in the new version of your textbook and you want to bring those in to your LMS, here's how:
Blackboard Installation Guide — the same Deep Linking steps add individual chapters.
D2L Installation Guide — see the "Adding or Updating Individual Content Later" section.
Moodle Installation Guide — see the "Adding or Updating Individual Content Later" section.
This shortcut works because versions share links. A new version of a textbook keeps the same URLs, so copying your old shell carries links that resolve to the new version. That is not true of a separate textbook set up for another section — that one has its own links, and content has to be installed fresh from it. See A Guide to Teaching Multiple Sections.
4.2. Starting from scratch
If you have made substantial changes to the content in the new version of your textbook, we recommend to install the new version of the textbook from scratch. This is a fast process (between 1-3 minutes). To do this, simply follow the relevant guide below:
5. FAQs
5.1. Should I archive the old version of my textbook?
In the Settings page of the Control Center, you will see a big red box area titled Danger Zone, with a button titled Archive Course. If you press this button, your course will be archived. This will prevent you accessing that version of the textbook again, any data contained therein will become inaccessible, and any students studying in that version will no longer be able to access it.
For most instructors, there's no need to archive old versions of your textbook. We recommend to leave the old version as it is.
The only time we would recommend to archive a textbook is if you never used it and it's just getting in the way.
5.2. Do I need to update the links in my course?
You only need to add / remove / change links if you have changed some of the content in your new version of the textbook. In which case, follow the guide for your LMS: the Canvas Content Addition Guide; the Deep Linking steps in the Blackboard Installation Guide; or the "Adding or Updating Individual Content Later" section of the D2L or Moodle installation guides.
5.3. I'm teaching two sections this term. Can I make a new version for the second one?
No — a new version is for a later term. Only one version of a textbook can be active at a time and version date ranges cannot overlap, so a new version would replace your current class rather than run beside it. A concurrent second section needs a separate textbook of its own.
See A Guide to Teaching Multiple Sections — including how to have us copy a textbook you've customized heavily.
5.4. I have a question this guide doesn't answer. What's the fastest way to get help?
Open Blended AI from the tab on the right edge of your Control Center and ask away — it answers from our Help Center and can walk you through any step. And whenever you'd rather talk to a real person, it will connect you straight to our team, with near-immediate availability over Zoom.