Section 10.1. Creating a Lesson


10.1. Creating a Lesson

Before you begin creating a lesson, it's a good idea to draw a lesson flowchart. Lessons require more advanced planning than many of the other tools. With the potential for branching on each page, advanced planning is critical before you begin to develop your lesson. Even with two choices per page, if every choice results in a new page, you will quickly need a very large number of pages. The first page will require two additional results pages, and each of these will require two more for a total of seven pages just to two choices. The key to minimizing the number of pages is to reuse as many as possible.

Take a few minutes to draw a flowchart for your lesson. What will the first page display? What are the options? Where will the options take the student? It's important to answer these questions for each page of the lesson to avoid getting lost while you are actually creating the content.

Once you have your flowchart, it's time to start creating a lesson.

To add a lesson to your course:

  1. Click Turn Editng Mode On.

  2. In the Add an Activity menu, select Lesson. You'll then see the Add a New Lesson page, as shown in Figure 10-1.

    Figure 10-1. New lesson page


  3. Give your lesson a descriptive name.

  4. Select the maximum grade for completing the lesson (from 0 to 100).

  5. Choose the maximum number of answers/branches per page. This is the maximum number of selection options you want per page.

  6. Select the options you want to use for this lesson:


    Maximum number of attempts

    This represents the maximum number of attempts a student can make on any question. If a student has difficulty with a short-answer or numerical question type, she can make this number of attempts before being moved to the next page.


    Action after Correct Answer

    This determines how the system responds after a correct answer. Most of the time, you'll want the system to show the page you've selected as a response. You can also elect to have the system randomly display a question the student hasn't seen yet, or one she hasn't answered.


    Minimum number of Questions

    With this option, you can set the number of questions used as a base for calculating the student's grade. If you set a minimum number of questions, the student must answer at least this many questions to receive full credit.


    Number of Pages (Cards) to Show

    Set this parameter only if you are creating a flash-card lesson. If this is set to a number greater than 0, students will be shown that number of cards, and the lesson will end. If this is set to a number greater than the number of cards you've created, Moodle will display every card.


    Student can Re-take

    You can allow students to retake the lesson or not. You can set this only to Yes or No. You can't set the number of times a student can retake a lesson.


    Handling of Re-takes

    If you allow students to retake the lesson, you need to set a grading policy. You can use the mean of the student's grades on the lesson or select the maximum grade.

  7. Once you've selected the options you want to use, set the availability date and the deadline.

  8. Click Save Changes. You will then be taken to the editing page for the first page of the lesson.

Once you've set up the basic lesson shell, you need to create the first question page of the lesson. Each lesson's question page consists of a title, some content, and the question choices at the bottom of the page. When a student answers a question, he sees the response for his answer and a Continue button. The Continue button takes him to the appropriate branch page.

By default, the first response takes the student to the next page while all other responses return the student to the same page. After you've created a page, you can come back and edit this behavior. The lesson automatically presents the question choices in random order so you don't have to worry about the first response always being the correct one.

To create the first page, fill in the form shown in Figure 10-2:

  1. Give the page a name. The name will be visible to the student as he completes the lesson. You can also use it to organize your pages as you build the lesson.

  2. Enter the page contents. The contents will need to include the question you want the students to answer as well. If you are creating flash cards, you'll want to enter only the question here.

  3. Select the question type. Your options are multiple-choice, true/false, short-answer, numerical, and matching.

  4. If you want to use multiple-answer, multiple-choice questions or want case-sensitivity in the short-answer responses, select the question option.

  5. Enter the correct answer to the question in the Answer 1 box.

    Figure 10-2. First page in a lesson


  6. Enter the response generated by the answer.

  7. Enter any other answer choices you want to student to consider with responses for each.

  8. Click the Add a Question Page button at the bottom of the page.

You'll then see the lesson construction page, such as the one shown in Figure 10-3. Each page you create will be listed here with a number of options below it:


Import Questions

You can import questions from a variety of formats. The lesson module will create a page for each question you import.


Add a Branch Table

A branch table is a lesson page without responses to student selections. Instead, each selection option branches to another page. Branch tables do not impact a student's grade.


Add an End of Branch

If you use branch tables, you should end each branch with an end-of-branch page, which takes the student back to the last branch table page so she can select another alternative.


Add a Question Page Here

Click this link to add another question page. You can add a question page above or below any page.

Figure 10-3. Lesson construction page


At the top of each page table, you'll see the icons for moving, editing, or deleting the page. Below the page details, you'll see a button labeled Check Question. Clicking on this button shows the lesson from the student's point of view. You can answer questions, check out branches, and interact with the lesson. The only thing you won't be able to see is the final grade.

You can also test your lesson by clicking the Check Navigation link on the bottom of the page list. This link will take you to the first page in your lesson as a student would see it. You can then start from the beginning of the lesson and work your way through.

Once you've created your first page, you can add a new page, add a branch table, or edit an existing question. You'll need to add each page you want students to be able to view.



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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