A medical school semester runs several courses at once, each with its own lectures, quizzes and block exams. Most students do not struggle with any single lecture; they struggle with keeping track of all of them, and with remembering to come back to the ones that need another pass.
This guide describes a simple structure that holds up for a full semester, and shows how to set it up in PLAN10. The ideas work in any planner; PLAN10 is used here because it connects the pieces: courses, revisions, exams and today’s list.
The structure: course, subject, lecture
Organize every course the same way, so that each lecture has one clear place:
- Course: a block or module, for example “Renal & Urinary Block” or “Pharmacology I”.
- Subject: a group inside it, usually how your school splits the block: anatomy and physiology, pathology, pharmacology.
- Lecture: one teaching session or topic, named so you would recognize it out of context (“Nephrotic syndrome”, not “Lecture 9”). A lecture can also hold sub-items, such as the parts of a long session.
Once lectures live in one place, the rest becomes scheduling: when to review each one, which exam it belongs to, and what today should contain.
Three ways to get a course into PLAN10
In Course Manager, New Course offers three starting points. You can mix them across your courses: one built by hand, one drafted with AI, one imported from a classmate.
Method 1: create the course yourself
Best when you have the timetable in front of you and want full control. Choose Create New Course, enter a name, an optional description and a colour, and create it. Then, inside the course, use New Item to add subjects and lectures in your school’s order. You can rename, reorder or hide subjects later from the course’s settings.
Method 2: draft it with AI from your materials
Best when your school gives you a syllabus, a course outline or a timetable as a file. Choose Build with AI. Attach the file (a source file is required), add instructions if you want to guide how it is organised, and choose Generate Course.
What to know before you rely on it:
- Supported files: PDF, images, plain text, Markdown and CSV, up to 40 MB in total across your attachments. At least one file is required; the course is built from what the file contains.
- What it produces: a draft course with subjects and lectures, based on the lecture names and structure it can find in your description and files.
- Long documents: a long PDF can be processed in sections. PLAN10 shows the progress of each section and then combines them into one draft.
- Review comes first: the flow has three stages, Create, Review & refine and Save. You can edit the draft, ask for changes, and only then save it as a course.
Method 3: import a course a classmate shared
Best when someone in your year, or a year above, has already built the same block. In the Public Library, search or browse Courses, open Preview to read the full list of subjects and lectures, then choose Import into my account.
The import is an editable copy that belongs to you. Change anything that differs at your school. If the author publishes an update later, your copy shows it and you decide which changes to apply.
Share the work so classmates do not repeat it
Every year, students in the same class build the same course structures from the same timetable, one at a time. One of the ideas behind PLAN10 is that this work only needs to be done once. When your course is in good shape, publishing it lets a classmate start from your structure in a minute.
Students can publish three kinds of resources today:
- Courses: the subjects and lectures of a course you built.
- Study rounds: the days and tasks of a revision plan.
- Countdown Collections: a named list of dates, such as exam and registration deadlines (see How to Share University Events and Important Dates).
Nothing is published automatically, and private items stay private. To share, choose + Publish in the Library (or Publish on the course), check the list of what will be published, write a clear title and description, and choose who can find it:
- Public: visible in the Public Library and searchable.
- Private by code: hidden from browsing, and opened with a private code you give to your class or study group.
Published items can be updated, made private by code, or unpublished from My Publications. Moderators can hide items that break the rules; the author still sees a note explaining why.
Plan revisions, not just lectures
Attending or watching a lecture once is rarely enough. Spacing reviews over the following weeks is one of the more reliable ways to keep material, and it is the part most students leave unplanned.
In PLAN10, Review Systems are reusable spacing patterns you build yourself, for example a first review a few days after the lecture, a second a week later and a third before the exam. Apply one to a lecture and each review appears on your calendar, labelled R1, R2, R3. After each review, record how well it went (strong, moderate or weak); the course view and its statistics use those ratings.
Prioritize what is coming
When several exams overlap, plan backwards from the nearest one:
- Add each exam as a countdown. Countdowns shows how many days are left, and an exam can also appear on the calendar.
- Plan a round for the nearest exam. In Round Planner, spread that course’s lectures over the days before it, and send each day to your calendar.
- Leave the other courses on their review schedules, so they keep moving without needing a plan of their own until their exam gets close.
Keep daily tasks manageable
A semester plan only works if each day is realistic. The Daily Planner shows one day: reviews due, tasks sent from rounds, and anything you added, in the order you choose. If a day is too full, move a task to tomorrow instead of carrying it silently.
Review your progress each week
Once a week, open each course and switch to Statistics. Look for three things: subjects with untouched lectures, reviews that are overdue, and topics you keep rating as weak. Those are next week’s priorities.
When the semester changes
Timetables move, exams get rescheduled, and some weeks go badly. A few adjustments keep the plan honest:
- An exam moves: change the countdown date, then move or shorten the round for that course.
- You fall behind: on the round, use Plan with AI with an instruction such as “reduce intensity” or “add review days”, review the draft, and save only what makes sense.
- The school changes the content: edit the course directly, or, if you imported it, check whether the author has published an update.
- A course ends: hide it from the sidebar so the courses you are still studying stay in front of you.
Preparing for a licensing exam alongside your courses? How to Prepare for USMLE Step 1 Using PLAN10 applies the same structure to a systems-based exam.
Try it with one course.
Create a free PLAN10 account, add the course you are studying now, and give its exam a date. You can import or share the rest later.