Chapter 10. Lessons


When I was growing up, I enjoyed reading a series of books called Choose Your Own Adventure. Written in second person, they placed the reader into the story as the main character. Each chapter was a page or two long ended with a choice of actions. I could choose the action I wanted to take and turn to the appropriate page to see what happened. I could then make another choice and turn to that page, and so on until the story ended or my character died, which happened with disturbing regularity.

The Moodle lesson tool is a lot like the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Each page in the lesson can have a question at the bottom of the page. The resulting page depends on the answer the student gives. You can create branching paths through the material based on the selections students make at each page.

With branching lessons, you can create programmed learning opportunities in which each correct answer brings up a new piece of information and a new question. You can also easily create flash-card lessons and, with a little creativity, you can use the lesson module to create simulations and case studies to respond to student input which results in a degree of interactivity.

There are two basic page types in the lesson module. The question page presents the student with a question, and the student has to enter a correct answer. After a student submits his answer, he will see the response you've created and will be taken to another page or looped back to the same page. Question pages are scored and added to the student's cumulative grade.

A branc tables page presents the user only with the option to select a branch. There is no correct or incorrect answer for each response, and the student selections do not impact his grade.

The authors of the tool envision branches as tables of contents giving students access to chains of questions. At the end of a chain, the user will return to the branch table, be presented with another branch table, or end the lesson. Of course, you don't have to create a lesson this way. You can use the branch table to create a branch simulation in which the student's choices present him with consequences and new decisions. At the end of the chapter, we'll explore some other creative ways to apply the lesson module.

Creating a lesson isn't complex, but the math of branching lessons means you have to plan carefully how you want to use this capability. Unless you prune your branching lesson, you will end up with huge number of options for students, and a large number of pages to write.



Using Moodle
Using Moodle: Teaching with the Popular Open Source Course Management System
ISBN: 059652918X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 113

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