Adding Lessons to Moodle Course
A lesson is a series of web pages displayed in a specific order. Most lessons consist of several pages. The next page that the student sees might depend upon the student's answer to a question.
Essentially, a Lesson is a series of web pages that presents information and questions. A Moodle lesson can be a powerful combination of instruction and assessment. Lessons offer the flexibility of a web page, the interactivity of a quiz, and branching capabilities.
Types of Lesson Pages
In a lesson, different kinds of pages perform different functions. If you intend to create a lesson that has jumps, clusters, and branches, then draw a diagram of the lesson. A flowchart can tell you what kind of pages you will need to create.
Content pages
A content page displays some information and then offers one or more buttons for the student to click in order to navigate to a different content page or question page. The buttons at the bottom of this page are added by the course creator.
Cluster with questions
A cluster page, end of cluster page, and the pages in between them act as a single unit.
End of branch
An end of branch page automatically jumps to a page that is specified by the lesson creator. Just as students will never see the cluster and end of cluster pages, students will never see an end of branch page. It is just an automatic jump page.
Question page
Even though it's called a question page, the page can contain more than just a question. It's a web page, so you can add any content to it. Usually, it contains information and a question to test the student's understanding. You can choose different types of questions:
- Multiple choice
- True/false
- Short answer
- Numeric
- Matching
- Essay
You can make the lesson jump to a new page, based upon the answer the student selects.
Settings For Lessons
Display ongoing score
When this is set to Yes, each page of the lesson displays the student's score, and the number of possible points so far.
Display left menu and minimum grade to display menu
Display left menu displays a navigation bar on the left side of the slide show window. Without that navigation bar, the student must proceed through the slide show in the order that Moodle displays the lesson pages and must complete the lesson to exit.
Sometimes, you may want a student to complete the entire lesson, in order, before allowing him or her to move freely around the lesson. The setting for Minimum grade to display menu accomplishes this. You can use this setting to ensure that the student goes completely through the lesson the first time, before allowing the student to freely move around the lesson.
Maximum number of answers
At the bottom of each question page in a lesson, Maximum number of answers determines the maximum number of choices that each question can have. If each answer sends the student to a different page, then the number of answers is also the number of branches possible.
Use default feedback
If this is set to Yes, if Moodle does not see any custom feedback that you created for a question, it will display a default message like That's corrector or That's incorrect.
Link to next activity
This setting enables you to put a link to another activity in the course, at the end of the lesson.
Allow student review
This option enables a student to go backwards in a lesson, and retry questions that he or she got wrong.
Provide option to try a question again
This option displays a message after the student incorrectly answers a question. The message invites the student to try the question again, but for no points.
Maximum number of attempts
This option determines how many times a student can attempt any question. It applies to all questions in the lesson.
Number of pages to show
This option determines how many pages are shown. If the lesson contains more than this number, the lesson ends after reaching the number set here. If the lesson contains fewer than this number, the lesson ends after every page has been shown. If you set this to zero, the lesson ends when all pages have been shown.
Practice lesson
If you set Practice lesson to Yes, this lesson will not show up in the grade book. In a practice lesson, students see a grade after completing the activity, but this grade is only for them.
Custom scoring
Normally, a correct answer in a question is worth the entire point value for the question, and each wrong answer is worth zero. Enabling custom scoring allows you to set a point value for each individual answer in a question. Use this if some answers are more right or more wrong than others. If a question is more important, use custom scoring to give it more points.
Handling of retakes
This setting is relevant only if the student is allowed to repeat the lesson (the setting above is set to Yes). When the students are allowed to retake the lesson, the grades shown in the Grades page are either the average of the retakes or the student's best grade.
Minimum number of questions
This option sets the lower limit for the number of questions used to calculate a student's grade on the lesson. It is relevant only when the lesson is going to be graded.