Title: Lesson
Course: all activities > Section: All activities

A Demonstration Lesson

Welcome to the first demonstration lesson. This lesson introduces the Lesson Module, some of the terminology used in the module and how it might be best used in a Moodle Course. We have tried to put examples of features for you to see and use.

If you are looking at this lesson as a teacher in edit mode, click on the "Preview " tab. That will show you the lesson as viewed by a student starting at the first page. The preview icon, , will show just a page's content in a student view.

The next page will act as our Table of Contents for this lesson. Students will be able to choose which segment of this lesson they would like to see.

Table of Contents

The lesson module presents a series of pages to the student who is usually asked to make some sort of choice underneath the content area. The significant difference between a Lesson and other activity tools available in Moodle comes from its adaptive ability, without direct teacher interaction.

In a basic form, an answer to a question on a page, may send the student back to the page to reconsider the content or to the next page in the lesson. In a more advanced use, each answer on a question page will send a student to a different page in the lesson.

In this lesson we've going to cover four subjects.

Have a look at each one in the order below. You will jump back here. Clicking on Summary is a way to leave the lesson.

Good Luck!

This is a branch table and you will learn more about it later. It allows us to show some options for you to pick. This page is titled "Table of Contents".

*Pages, Questions, Answers and Responses

A lesson is made up of pages . Normally each page gives some content (information) and might be followed by a question or a selection of choices for the student. There are two general types of content pages: Branch Tables and Questions.

We will talk about these two types and their variations more in detail later. For the moment, we will look a multiple choice question, to gain a basic overview of a page.

It is your job to write a good question and great answers. Each answer has its own reply from the teacher (Responses). Each answer will also send the student to somewhere else in the lesson (Jumps). And each answer can be graded (Scored).

Once the student has chosen their answer, the teachers response is displayed before the "new" page is displayed. (The word "new" is in quotes because the student may well be shown the same page again if they chose the wrong answer or see it again later.)

The teacher does not have to end a page with a question and enter a set of answers or choices. Moodle has an default for these when it does not find them. On the next page, we will show you an example.

What would you like to do next?

- * Go to next page
- Miss this easy question and go back to this page
Feedback: I will send you back to the page you just saw.
- Select another answer that will go to next page

Question with graphics and no answers

When this page was created, we only gave it a page title and what you see right now in the page content area. All the jumps and responses were not changed, so this is a very basic page. We can do this for any page type. This happens to be a multiple choice question page. Of course we can come back and edit this page again as a teacher.

Notice the image, a Moodle logo, in the "page contents" of this question page.

One of those odd facts: A student can always leave a lesson before completing it and the teacher can allow them to re-enter the lesson. At that point, the student will be asked if they want to return to where they left off or start again.

What is going to happen when there are no choices entered by the teacher for this multiple choice question page?

Edit Order, Navigation Order, and Jumps

There was a button. Now would be a good time to discuss navigation.

When the teacher edits a lesson, the pages appear one after the other in a series. In Moodle, we will call this view the Edit Order. Once a lesson contains two or more pages the teacher can move existing pages around and add pages to any position within the series. The edit order is the way the teacher sees the lesson pages.

The Navigation Order is how the students see the pages. We have mentioned that Jumps can send the student to any page in the Lesson. For example, a teacher asks a question and gives 3 answers. The best answer's jump skips 3 pages in the edit order, and the other answers' jump to the next page for more information about the subject. The navigational order can customize the student's experience.

Lesson has many tools for the teacher who may want design interesting paths for their students, based upon each student's choices.

In Moodle the edit order means

- *How a teacher sees the lesson pages
- How the program assigns a page an ID
Feedback: This feature in a question page is called a "Response". Testing, already? Your selection will send you back to "This page". You may want to try the other wrong answer.
- How the student sees the lesson pages
Feedback: This is a question page feature called a "Response". I am sorry, my explanation should have led you to make the "How a teacher sees the lesson pages" choice. Did you see my hint about the " * ". Since it is my mistake, I am sending you on to the next page.

Jumps and More Navigation

Jumps are associated with a specific answer in a question or a description in a branch table. Jumps can create an adaptive lesson which is based on a student's choice.

Jumps can be divided into two types - Relative Jumps and Absolute Jumps. The default navigation setting in a page uses the relative jumps This Page or Next Page. These jumps do exactly what they say: stay on the same page or advance to the next page in the edit order. Absolute jumps lead to a specific page, identified by its title.

In simple lessons, jumps send the student on to the next page in the edit order. However, jumps can create branches, loops and a potential non-lineal structure in any lesson or series of pages in a lesson.

There are also some advanced non-linear lesson features which use special navigation pages. See "clusters" and "classic branches" in Moodle documentation for more information.

The teacher can see how a lesson's navigation "works" by using Preview Tab or by changing their role on the course home page. Either of these methods starts at the first page in the Lesson. A word of caution: changing roles and preview does not give an exact view of how the student will navigate through the Lesson. Any of the icons in edit mode "launches" the lesson at that page.

We will talk about more non lineal uses of jumps in the next part.

Branch page 1

Did you notice the button "This page jump" demonstrated a "this page" relative jump? Officially this current page type is called a Branch Table in MoodleSpeak.

The initial purpose of this type of page was to provide a Table of Contents for the student to investigate a Lesson. A Branch Table page shows the student some content and can offer the student a selection of labeled buttons. These pages are grade neutral and teachers do not get to add a responsive comment with every choice. Instead of being called Answers, the choices are called Descriptions. Jumps are attached to descriptions.

Teachers who just want to add a page of information, will probably select a branch page and leave the descriptions blank. In that case the default jump is the next page with a "Continue" button. (Note to file, Lesson Settings can change that default of what happens when the teacher does not enter a description.)

Building Lessons

When a lesson is first created, the teacher is taken to the Lesson Setting screen. The "Update this Lesson" button in edit mode also goes to this page. After saving the Lesson Settings the first time, the teacher is asked to select a page type as their first page. Once the the lesson is under construction the teacher can add pages, edit pages, remove pages and move pages.

Moodle uses tabs that a teacher sees when they enter a lesson. Here the teacher is on the edit tab.

An Expanded view show every page and each part. Plus there are links to add different pages before or after, to view or delete pages. The pages are in edit order.

The collapsed view is a relatively new feature - here is a partial view of the pages of this lesson, also in edit order.

Many find it easier to work with many smaller lessons than one large lesson. We will cover how to link lessons under Openings and Closings.

- *Check this to continue & get credit for a correct answer.
- Check here to jump back 2 pages

This is the last page on Pages - Review

What have we presented.
- Lessons are made up of pages
- Teachers look at pages in the edit order
- Question and Branch Table pages have
  - Titles
  - Content areas
  - Answers or Descriptions
  - Jumps
- Question pages have
  - Teacher responces
  - Can be scored
- Teachers see the lesson with tabs
  - Preview
  - Edit
    - Collapsed Edit View
    - Expanded Edit View
  - Reports
  - Essay

We have demonstrated some slightly creative features in the pages content. Such as external HTML links, inserted images, different fonts and formats. And added a block for the student to always see in this Lesson.

Now what would you like to do

--End of branch

End of branch

*Question Overview

Questions were the first page designed for the Lesson module. They were developed as a formative learning tool for a teacher. Thus a lesson question, unlike a Quiz question, can interact.

We learned, the key feature is the jump associated with every answer. Jumps can point to a relative page in the edit order or to an absolute page by the page title. There are 6 basic question types and we will cover these in Lesson 2.

The page content and even the answer areas have a handy HTML tool bar to make the presentation of content exciting.

There are scoring options that can be used with a question. These can be tied to grades (a course feature) or not as the teacher wishes.

The answers or choices the student makes can influence the score or their movement through the lesson.

Shuffling Answers

The form of questions in a Lesson is slightly different than in a Quiz activity. One major difference is the jump feature not found in Quiz. Lesson questions answers will automatically reshuffle themselves for each student.

Student 1 sees answer order as A-B-C-D-E
Student 2 sees answer order as E-A-C-D-B
Student 3 sees answer order as C-A-B-E-D

The shuffle feature can be a shock to both teachers and students who are used to questions written out on paper. For example, "all of the above" will look sort of silly when it may shuffle to the first or a middle line choice .

Since the question answers will appear in random order, some teachers put the correct answer as the first Answer when composing a question page. This practice makes it easier to double check when editing a lesson.

We mentioned that questions can be viewed in random order when clusters or classic branches are used in a Lesson.

Correct Answers and Wrong Answers

Correct Wrong

Before we talk about scoring and grading, we need to cover "correct" and "wrong" answers. First, you don't have to use any of the score features and you can hide anything to do with a score from your students.

With custom scoring turned off in Lesson settings, any answer's jump that advances in the edit order is considered a correct answer. Likewise, any answer's jump that stays on the page or goes back in the edit order is considered as wrong. Correct answers are given a 1 point.

Remember in the simple way of doing things: the teacher determines the correct and wrong answers by the jump. And of course, when all the answers in a question jump forward, then each answer would be considered correct.

Here is an example of a foreshadowing question, that always makes my "perfect" or "sleeping" students nervous. There is no wrong answer .

How how does custom scoring option work, do you remember?

- *No, I don't remember that.
- *Yes, But I would like a review

Score the simple way

Basically, a simple formula is used to come up with a Lesson score. The number of correct answers divided by the number of answers is the score.

We can reveal a student's on going score in lesson settings. If turned on, the student will see something like:

"Number of questions answered: 6; (You should answer at least 12. Number of correct answers 6, your current grade is 5 out of 10. thus far".

And the teacher can show the top student scores to everyone at the end of the lesson.

There are some other features that can be set in Lesson settings, which will produce a different result for a score. That means giving the teacher more flexibility.

Next we will discuss the custom scoring option.

Custom Scoring

CUSTOM SCORING - a Lesson setting
This option will allow the teacher to put a numerical point value on each answer. Answers may have negative values or positive values. The direction of the jump does not matter for scoring purposes.

Custom scoring adds the total points and divides by the number of questions. However, it is possible to to set a maximum score and then Lesson will multiply the maximum score by the percentage correct. For example, a student who scores 2 out of 3, with a maximum score of 2, will receive a score of 1.3 for the Lesson.

There are some other lesson settings which relate to questions. See grading options, flow control and other when a Teacher clicks on "Update the lesson" button.

Custom scoring is turned on in Lesson 1 but off on this Lesson.

Historically in Moodle, how was Lesson intended to be used?
.

- *As formative assignments, with optional grades
Feedback: Yes, the grades may act as an incentive to the students particularly if they are allowed to repeat lessons and get the perfect score.
- As exams.
Feedback: Lessons are not the same as exams. Lessons are there to impart knowledge not to test it.
- As an alternative to the Quiz
Feedback: Lessons are not really quizzes although they involve questions, answers and grades. Lessons are intended as a way of getting knowledge across in an interesting way. They may also indicate in a rough sort of way, how much knowledge is getting through but they should not be seen as an alternative to quizzes and other summative ways of trying to measure knowledge.
- As a summative assignments
Feedback: Summative assignments should vigorously test a student's knowledge. Lessons are really more about giving students that knowledge in the first place. Grades are really a means of getting the student involved in the lesson. A student's knowledge should be tested by other methods.

Re-takes and other Lesson Settings

A lesson can be used as a formative assignment, imparting some knowledge while at the same time making some demands on the students. There several options a teacher can use under Lesson Settings to promote this.

By default lesson settings allow re-takes but the teacher can allow just one attempt. The teacher will also have to tell Moodle how the retakes should be scored: use the mean (default) or the maximum/best score.

Some teachers like to use the review button , to encourage the student to reexamine the material. One can be placed after a missed question or at the end of the lesson. Many students will discover that the browser "back" and "forward" buttons usually work. In any case, the teacher should consider the maximum attempts per question that should be allowed in the lesson.

The practice lesson setting, will not record the students score in the gradebook . But the student can see how they scored when those options are turned on. Lesson 4 in this demonstration is a practice lesson.

Has this page presented too much material for an Adult Learner?

- , I liked the links to MoodleDocs

Import Questions

It is possible to import questions from text files that meet several different standards. Thus you can compose a one or more questions in a file and then insert it into your lesson.

Above is the pull down menu found on the Edit expanded tab with the Import Question link. The Question link appears above and below every page in the edit expanded tab view.

---Conclusion of Questions

In Review:
Question pages were developed as a formative learning tool for teachers.

The key feature is the jump associated with every answer. Jumps can point to a relative page in the logical order or to an absolute page by the page title.

The page content has robust HTML features that can also be used in a question's responses.

There are scoring options that can be used with a question.

We can show the students their score and progress by changing lesson settings.

(Next in the logical order will be an end of branch page , that will send the student back to the Table of Content page for this Lesson. Lesson 2 will give examples of each of the Question types.)

This concludes the "question and option" segment in Lesson. The next short segment is on "Branch Tables" pages, but we will let you make the next choice. with our multiple choice questio7u

- Table of Contents
- Next section on Branch Tables
- End this Lesson

End of Branch

End of Branch

*Branch Table

Branch tables are pages which allow student choices that are not graded and can link to any other page in the lesson. They can be inserted any place in the Lesson. They have most of the editing features of a question page. The student sees the page title and when "Display ongoing score" is turned on, will see their ongoing score on a Branch Table page.

This lesson's "Table of Content" page is one use of a branch table. This current page is another example of a grade neutral branch page. It has information for the student to absorb.

Don't be fooled by the question at the end of this page. We have just put another foreshadowing question in our content and the two answers in the description section.

A simple branch and a "classic branch" are a series of pages in the edit order. A branch offers some interesting options for a teacher. A classic branch uses a special navigational page called an "End of Branch".

Have you every heard of an End of Branch before?

Branch descriptions

One method of building a lesson is to simply start by adding pages in the edit order and not creating any jumps. In our initial questions, the page content is important and the ending question and answer confirm the student's mastery of the material. So we set the best answer to "next page" and other answers to "this page" Here is a sample lesson with Branch Tables (B) and questions (Q) that covers all the material.
- B1, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4

Examining our lesson, we recognize that some of our students need more ground work laid before the questions and that we are covering two points. We add Branch Tables in front of some of our questions with more information, a review at the end. We have not added any descriptions buttons to our Branch Tables, so the student just sees a continue button. Here is our lesson.
- B1, B2, Q1, Q2, B3, Q3, Q4, B4

Now that we have the basic layout, we can create two simple branches by adding some description buttons and jumps. At B1 we create one description and jump that lead to B2 and another that links to B3.
- B1, B2, Q1, Q2, B3, Q3, Q4, B4

It is a best practice to give the student an option to return to the start (B1) so we add that description (Return to start) and jump to B2, B3 and B4. And of course we want to make sure that there is a description that leads to the 7-+"Next Page" jump in B2 and B3.

Confused? Keep it simple. Put you content in one page at a time in the edit order. Use next page for right answers and this page for wrong answers.

Best practices for branchs

It is important to give students a means of ending the lesson. This might be done by including an "End Lesson" description in a Branch Table and setting the jump for description to the imaginary page called End of Lesson . Another option is for the last page in the lesson (here "last" is used in the edit order context) to simply continue to the next page, which will be the imaginary End of Lesson page.

It is possible for a student to feel they are locked in a classic branch or on a question. Perhaps the teacher set the number of attempts at a question too high for the lesson.

Remember that if you use a Branch Table as table of content page that jumps to one or more Branch segments, students might be revisiting pages more than once and missing some of the branch segments. The teacher can add a question or two in each branch and set a minimum number of questions to answer in the Lesson to encourage their students to discover all the paths.

----Conclusion of Branch table

Those are the basics about Branch Tables and the simple branch.
1. Branch Tables are grade neutral ways to present content and give student choices.
2. The title is displayed above the content, and
3. The ongoing score maybe displayed on all Branch Table pages.
4. Advanced navigation tools use clusters and classic branches.

This page is a question page with all the answers and responses left blank. The jumps are set to "this page". Not finding any directions, Lesson will go to the next page. In this case it is an End of Branch page, which will automatically send the student to the Table of Contents.

This can be confusing if the student forgets which parts of this lesson they have seen.

End of Branch

End of Branch page. Students will not see this page. However, it has a content area which in edit mode can be seen by the teacher.

1. Thus it can be used to put things like learning objectives for the segment, or
2. Perhaps a to do list of things to fix in the preceeding branch.

*Openings and Closings

This segment will contain a brief over view of dependencies and linking options that are found in lesson settings via the "Update this Lesson" button.

There are several ways to control student entry into a lesson. A basic way is to hide it from student view either with the hide icon on the course page or in lesson settings. The Access control area can set open and shut times and set a password for just the lesson.

Lesson has a lesson feature called dependency.

This lesson is dependent upon the Lesson called "Lesson 1- Basic Parts", the student must have spent 2 minutes and completed this lesson. The teacher using the "Update this Lesson" button in this Lesson, will see this exact setting.

These options are especially useful for a asynchronous course or set of learning activities. The choice is always the teachers.

---Closings

At some point in the Lesson, the student is going to finish. Hopefully the student will arrive at the End of Lesson, which is a screen that a teacher can not directly edit. This will congratulate the student for finishing the lesson and offer them some more choices.

The default Lesson setting is to show links to grades and the course home page. It is also possible to set a link for another activity. In the example below we are giving the student a choice to "Go top:" Lesson 2, or "Return to": the course home page, or view their grades.

Now is time to make another choice. What would you like to do?

*Summary of Lesson 1

The goal of this Lesson Topic is to provide both a description of a Lesson and serve as a demonstration of a simple Lesson. We encourage teachers to look at this in edit mode.

1. "Lesson 1 - Basic Parts" covered:
  1. The overview of pages and navigation
  2. Questions pages and scoring
  3. Branch Table pages and branches
  4. Opening and closing options
2. The Lesson module has changed a great deal since its first inception
3. Lesson is very robust, remember to start simply
4. Read about Lesson in the Moodle documentation
5. Check the FAQs
6. We encourage teachers to visit to Lesson Forum and ask questions

Please notice that in this and the following Lesson, we have used many HTML toolbar features.

And one last question after you continue ...

Last Question

This is the last question and the last page in the edit order in this lesson. All 3 answers are set to jump to "next page". In the edit order, there is no page that follows.

Except of course, the imaginary navigational end of lesson page. We said earlier that page is reached by relative jump of that name.

The important question is:

Do you think you will use the Lesson module in your courses?

- Yes
Feedback: Good, I'm pleased.
- No
Feedback: I hope you learned something about Moodle!
- I'm not sure
Feedback: Well, time will tell!