Course wiki workflow
How to Build a Course Wiki from Lecture Notes and PDFs
Turn one course's readable lecture slides, notes, and PDFs into a maintained wiki with exact sources, prerequisite links, revisions, and review state.
Article packet
Workflows
Students, independent learners, and educators organizing one course's readable lecture slides, notes, and PDFs
8 min read
01
Start with one course and an approved folder of readable lecture materials.
02
Create one concept page at a time with exact sources, prerequisite links, and open questions.
03
Track source revisions and review state so revised slides do not leave polished but stale notes behind.
Inspect source and review state before trusting a concept page
This genuine Wenlan desktop capture comes from the app's deterministic test fixture, not a school, course, or student workspace. It shows maintained Pages with source counts and a review queue, the same product surfaces used to keep revised course material and unresolved evidence visible.
- 01
Bound one course
Choose one course, term, readable source set, excluded material, and named reviewer before creating concept pages.
- 02
Distill linked concepts
Keep each concept, prerequisite, explanation, source location, revision, and open question together in a reviewable record.
- 03
Review after source changes
Open the cited lecture passage, inspect stale or conflicting support, and update the page only after the current material is understood.
Worked course concept record
This neutral template is not an answer key. Replace every placeholder with material you are allowed to use and a named reviewer.
- Concept and question
- One durable course concept, the question it answers, and the shortest explanation the current material supports.
- Prerequisites and sources
- Required concepts, exact lecture or page references, source IDs, material date, and source revision.
- Review state
- Current, stale, contradicted, or unresolved, with a learner or educator reviewer and the next review trigger.
01
Quick answer
Create one source boundary for one course, register its readable lecture slides, notes, and text-extractable PDFs, then maintain one page per durable concept. Each concept page should name its prerequisite concepts, cite the exact lecture or page, record the source revision, and show whether the explanation is current, stale, contradicted, or awaiting review.
Wenlan can sync supported course documents, distill source-backed Pages, preserve citations and wikilinks, surface stale dependencies, and keep revisions reviewable. It is not equivalent to NotebookLM and does not generate flashcards, create quizzes, transcribe audio, run OCR, grade work, tutor students, solve homework, plan exams, or make academic judgments.
02
When this problem appears
Lecture materials accumulate by week, but the durable ideas do not follow the same structure. A definition may live in week two, its prerequisite in week one, a correction in a later slide deck, and an exception in a reading note. A one-time summary hides those relationships and can stay fluent after the instructor revises the source. A useful course wiki keeps the explanation small, linked, and traceable to the current material.
03
Build one course-material to concept-page loop
Use materials you are allowed to store and inspect. Begin with one course, one term or version, and a small source set so that every concept page can still be checked against its lecture material.
- Name the course, term, source owner, included folders, excluded material, and the learner or educator responsible for review.
- Register readable Markdown, text, or text-extractable PDFs. Keep scanned PDFs outside the workflow until an external OCR step produces text you can verify.
- Create one page per durable concept instead of one giant course summary. Give every page a question it answers and a short current explanation.
- Link prerequisite concepts explicitly and record unresolved terms, conflicting explanations, and examples that belong to another page.
- Attach important statements to the exact lecture, page, section, or source ID and record the source revision or course-material date.
- When slides or notes change, resync the source, mark dependent pages stale or unresolved, and review the cited passage before accepting the new explanation.
Wenlan workflow and a neutral course concept record
wenlan status
wenlan sources add ~/Courses/distributed-systems/materials
# In a Wenlan plugin client:
/distill <course concept>
/pages <course concept>
/lint
/curate
concept: leader election
question: Why can two nodes not both remain leader in the same term?
prerequisites: terms; quorum intersection
answer: <short explanation supported by the course material>
sources: <lecture, slide or page, and source ID>
source_revision: <term, file revision, or material date>
review_state: <current | stale | contradicted | unresolved>
reviewer: <student or educator>
next_review: <source-change trigger or date>04
What to check next
This is a source-backed study organization workflow, not an AI tutor or assessment system. Wenlan does not generate flashcards, does not create quizzes, does not transcribe audio, does not run OCR, does not grade work, does not tutor students, does not solve homework, does not plan exams, and is not equivalent to NotebookLM. The learner or educator remains responsible for source rights, interpretation, academic integrity, and review.
Build one inspectable course concept
Add a small approved source set, maintain one concept page with prerequisites and exact sources, then revise it only after checking the changed material.
FAQ