Pressbooks - Overview (UW-Madison)

Pressbooks is a content authoring platform that lets you create and host custom, interactive texts for the web and in formats like PDF, MOBI, and EPUB. 

Please see DoIT’s Pressbooks IT Service Page for a more detailed description of Pressbooks.

Basic Functionality

• Pressbooks is designed to help users author books. Once a user has a Pressbooks account, they can create a book and begin to author content. This content can then be embedded into Canvas or shared as a link.
  
  
• Each Pressbook is given its own unique URL, and content is typically organized into Front Matter, Main Body, and Back Matter.
  
  
• In addition to text, users can add images, embedded video, links, Hypothes.is annotations, and interactive H5P activities to supplement their text. Users can also handle all aspects of their book’s metadata including contributors, licenses, and more.
  
  

Advanced Functionality

• Pressbooks chapters with H5P activities can also be embedded into Canvas as external tool assignments which have points and an entry in the Canvas Gradebook. This is considered an advanced feature and can be unstable. Therefore, these advanced features are only available for for-credit, timetable uses.
  
  
• Users interested in using these advanced features in Pressbooks should request a consultation with the Learn@UW-Madison team.

For training information and how to get started with Pressbooks, see Pressbooks - Getting Started

• Documents
  • UW-Madison Knowledgebase:Getting Started with Pressbooks to author interactive modules
    
    
  • UW-Madison Knowledgebase:Pressbooks Accessibility and Usability Information
    
• Pressbooks User Group
• MS Teams Space and email list
  
  
• Vendor:Pressbooks User Guide
  
  
• Vendor:Pressbooks YouTube Channel
  
  
• Canvas Tech Modules
  • These modules, developed by DoIT Academic Technology's Learn@UW-Madison team, are designed to help instructors introduce centrally supported learning technologies to their students. For more information, see Canvas - Student Tech Modules in Canvas Commons
  • A Pressbooks Student Tech Module template can be imported and modified in Canvas by instructors to communicate to students regarding the use of Pressbooks.