Authors usually create new course materials first using their favourite word processor. These can be course texts, workbooks, online tutorials or assessments. Course developers take these authored materials and use Courseworker with their own preferred XML Editor to:

• convert them into XML and tidy up any missing elements;
• create new XML course masters for any missing components;
• quickly generate high quality print/PDF course publications using Courseworker’s in-built professional batch pagination engine. These can be work-in-progress drafts for authors and editors, or final drafts for printers;
• generate hundreds of accessible web and eLearning publications from the same XML course masters;
• save the XML course masters safely and locally for future editing and re-use; or
• store the XML masters in Courseworker’s content repository to control and record all changes to it;
• share, reuse and re-brand course materials quickly with other course authors and providers;
• pass them on to be translated into multiple languages, and use the same efficient Courseworker production tools to generate new course materials in those languages.

Courseworker’s power comes from its in-built batch production tools that can for example paginate complex 700 page academic textbooks or journals in a few minutes. You edit and control the XML course master then sit back and let Courseworker do the hard work of typesetting it professionally for you while you work on something else.

In this way, Courseworker saves days of production effort, particularly when updating or re-branding course materials. It also gives you a professional press capability of your own, for publishing and owning your own course materials, text books and journals.

Courseworker’s batch web page generator takes the same XML course master and batch generates thousands of accessible HTML/web pages from it in seconds. These can then be uploaded onto your web server or online learning environment, including Moodle, Blackboard, Saba and many others.

From the quality perspective, Courseworker produced online courses are much more useful, and can be highly interactive with hyperlinks, embedded assessments, activities and reflective tasks, helping you to deliver innovative, high quality, interactive courses.

Strategically, Courseworker is standards-based, so content assets are never locked in to a particular technology or vendor.   It is a great way to invest once and forever in your course materials as long term assets. The explicit knowledge they contain can be passed on freely to future course teams as revision controlled repositories of flexible and intelligent course materials.