Study Plan is a student-facing feature available in Bookshelf+ enabled titles. This article explains how it works, how your syllabus affects the output, and what to tell students who ask about it.

What Study Plan does

When a student opens a Bookshelf+ title with study plan enabled, they can generate a personalized, week-by-week reading plan directly inside the book. They enter their term start and end dates and optionally upload or paste their course syllabus. The plan maps readings—typically by chapter—to the textbook's table of contents, estimates reading time per week, flags exam weeks, and links to CoachMe practice questions where available. If a student skips the syllabus, the plan distributes the full textbook evenly across the term.

How your syllabus shapes the plan

The plan locates what information is present in the syllabus in an attempt to best align the textbook chapters to the syllabus. When available, key milestones will be highlighted in the plan as reminders for students (such as a midterm or final). The more structure your syllabus has—chapter readings mapped to specific weeks, exams with dates— the more closely the student's plan will reflect your actual course sequence.

The student experience

Students manage the plan entirely on their own. They can:

Mark individual weeks complete — completed weeks move to a "Completed" section, and the next week becomes current automatically
Edit the title of any week
Delete individual weeks
Regenerate the plan with a new syllabus at any time

You cannot view or modify a student's plan. Plans are personal and per-book.

For more information on the student experience see Use Study Plan in Bookshelf+

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FAQs

As an instructor, can I upload my syllabus and generate a study plan?

Yes. The setup process is the same as for students - open a Bookshelf+ enabled title, go to the Study Plan tab, enter your term dates, and upload or paste your syllabus. This can be a useful way to preview what your students may see when they generate their own plans.

Important note: Generating a plan for yourself does not create or share a plan with your students. Each student generates their own independently, and because the output is AI-generated, results will vary — even with the same syllabus. Use it as a rough preview, not a guarantee of what your students will see.

Can a student use multiple study plans for the same book in two courses s at the same time?

Students cannot apply multiple study plans for one book at a time. A student using the same textbook across two courses in the same term will need to choose one course's syllabus. They can regenerate the plan with a different syllabus at any time, but only one plan per book is supported.

Does the plan automatically track student reading progress?

No. Progress tracking is manual. Students mark individual weeks complete themselves by selecting Mark Complete from the week's three-dot menu.

How much can students edit their plan?

Students can mark weeks complete, rename them, or delete them. They cannot reorder sessions or edit individual tasks within a week. To make bigger changes, they can regenerate the plan with updated term dates or a revised syllabus.

Will CoachMe questions always appear in the plan?

Only if CoachMe is enabled for that title. When CoachMe is on, the plan surfaces practice question links for each week's assigned reading. When it's off, the plan shows the reading schedule only.

What if a student uploads a syllabus that doesn't match the textbook?

If the AI determines the uploaded file is not relevant to the book, the student sees an error and can click Try Again to upload a different file or generate a plan from the textbook and term dates alone.

A student says they can't find Study Plan. What do I tell them?

Study Plans are only available on bookshelf.vitalsource.com and books where Bookshelf+ is enabled. If the student's title does not have Bookshelf+ enabled, the feature won't appear. If there is a discrepancy, direct the student to contact Bookshelf Support.

Where are syllabi stored, how do they integrate with existing data handling, and how long are they retained?

We store extracted content in our Artifacts database, under the same infrastructure, access controls, and security governance as all other customer data. Syllabus content is never used to train or fine-tune any model. Any interaction data used to improve the feature is aggregated and de-identified. Parsed content is retained for as long as the associated account is active.

Study Plan in Bookshelf+ — Instructor Overview