Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide
Using Lessons in Moodle.
An Illustrated Guide.
Mark J. Rollins
Lulu Enterprise Publishing
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Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide
Using Lessons in Moodle: An Illustrated Guide
First Published in Great Britain by Lulu Enterprise 2010 Copyright ŠMark J Rollins 2010 Mark Rollins assets the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved; No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide
Table of Contents Introduction................................................................................................................................ 4 Lesson Settings ........................................................................................................................... 4 Flow of a Lesson......................................................................................................................... 6 What the student sees.............................................................................................................. 8 How to create the question page.......................................................................................... 9 End Lesson................................................................................................................................ 10 Examples of Lesson Flow ........................................................................................................11 Sequential............................................................................................................................. 11 Sequential Branch Table .................................................................................................... 11 Conditional........................................................................................................................... 12 Conditional on grade, time taken or amount completed............................................ 12 Summary................................................................................................................................... 13 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 14
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Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide
Introduction “The significant difference between a Lesson and other activity tools available in Moodle comes from its adaptive ability.” http://docs.moodle.org/en/Lessons The lesson facility in Moodle falls under the umbrella of Add an Activity. I believe that the Lessons module is one of the most powerful tools in the armament of Moodle. The basic principle is that the lesson is a series of HTML WebPages within Moodle, which can facilitate the following learning/assessment scenarios:• • • •
Sequential learning ie one page links to the next page and visa versa Self-directed learning Self-directed assessment Simple Conditional
Lesson Settings
This value determines the maximum number of answers branches the teacher can use. The default value is 4 eg True, False, next page, end.
Practice lesson, determines if the students progress will be recorded as a grade; set to practice if you don’t want results in gradebook.
Custom scoring and Maximum grade, settings allow you to give numerical grade for each question and the maximum points for this particular lesson respectively.
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Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide
These allow students to a) go back and change answers, b) gives a review button after incorrect answer. This is the action after a correct answer, this usually means jump to next page, and you can however set it to go to an unseen page or unanswered page. Minimum number of questions, gives the student an indication of how many question they need to do in this lesson.
Lesson formatting; pages can be formatted to a particular size, background colour etc. Slide show enables you to display the lesson as a slide show, ie one page after another with a fixed width, height, and custom background colour. These options allow you to include a contents list ie side bar, from which students can jump to next topic, but if you make display only available after a certain progress this forces the students to follow a particular path.
These allow you to set condition by which the student can proceed, e.g. a minimum amount of time, 10% completed, or grade better than 50%. This encourages students to take time required and assess their own progress.
With this option you can link to an activity external to the lesson, for example a quiz, assignment, link to a resource or Webpage.
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Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide
Common module setting, are selfexplanatory. To allow grades from the lesson to be included in the gradebook you would need to categorise it under a category e.g. Volcanic
Flow of a Lesson Basically a lesson consists of a series of webpages, there are six basic components • • • • • •
A page (sometime referred to as a jump) can be link to a next page. A question Is a page with a question type at the end from which a response controls next jump. A Branch Table Is a series of pages on a specific topic Cluster Usually series of questions sandwiched between Start cluster and End Cluster End of Cluster Denotes the end of a series of pages/questions on a specific topic End of Branch Denotes the end of a Branch series (controls direction student can proceed)
By combining these particular pages you can design the flow of your lesson and I would suggest that you plan and set out your lesson before creating the lessons within Moodle.
This diagram shows the flow of a lesson, on the left using Pages, page jumps, questions, whilst on the right this lesson flow uses Branch Tables linking to pages, 6
Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide which could be sequential or jump from one part of the branch to another part of the branch.
With editor turned on, this is the page editor ie the jumps description is what name is given to the “button” that links the student to that page, in this case Volcano Types
Page Title
Instructions, fully editable HTML page content, you can format; add images, links and even videos.
This is the branch table where you create descriptions, that when clicked act to take the student to a new “Page” i.e. a jump.
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Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide
What the student sees. This what a student sees in terms of the initial instruction page. This first page is a Branch Table with three options where the student can “jump” to.
So let’s look at the next stage; what the student would see for the next page which in this case includes a question.
Here I have inserted an image and included a brief question within the page, ie a “question page” This example shows a multichoice question.
The student needs to answer the multi-choice question, and depending on the response, after clicking the “please check one answer button” the student will “jump” to a “response page” and depending on whether the answer is correct or incorrect is given “feedback” and could be directed to a remedial page to go back over learning before being able to attempt the question again. If you had just wanted the student to go to the next page, then you would create a question page but leave questions out, Moodle in this case creates a default “continue” button, which links to the next page in your lesson flow. 8
Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide How to create the question page.
This is the set up for a Question Page.
Give your page a title and decide on the question type. Add instructions or question, images, links, videos.
Below the instructions, you input Answers to questions and response (feedback given to student after answering the question.)
The score of 1 here indicates the correct answer, and the Jump 1 will, in this case take the student to the next stage of the lesson. If the answer was incorrect you could a have a jump to a remedial page or back to instruction page.
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Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide End Lesson
The End Lesson in this case is an essay and once the student as typed in their answer they click on enter answer box to submit the essay.
This is the page the student sees after submission and to end the lesson they then click on “continue”
This the final page of the lesson, indicating to the student, that the“ end of lesson reached “and an option to review grades or return to main course area.
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Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide Examples of Lesson Flow Sequential
Sequential Branch Table
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Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide Conditional
Conditional on grade, time taken or amount completed
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Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide
Summary At first lesson creation seems a rather daunting task, but my advice is that a) remember you are just working with WebPages with links created within the Lesson flow control; b) it is worthwhile “sketching� out your lesson before hand then seeing which parts link, where and when you would like to insert an assessment or quiz (basically the way you would plan a face to face lesson). c) What type of lesson you are hoping to create for example, self-directed learning lesson, self-directed assessment etc....but remember to have a Pedagogic outcome? If you look at Blooms Taxonomy and Moodle look how useful the lesson module can be.
Blooms (Revised) Taxonomy and Moodle
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Using Lessons in Moodle:- An Illustrated Guide
Bibliography http://moodle.org/ Moodle E-learning Course Development by William Rice (Paperback - 10 April 2006) Moodle Teaching Techniques by William Rice (Paperback - 20 Sep 2007)
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