Lesson – adaptive learning
Moodle’s lesson activity enables teachers to create content which can adapt to the learner’s
responses This is useful for decision making exercises,
simulations, independent revision and subject practice. Learners can choose their own
path through the content.
In this First aid lesson teaching CPR, the course participant can first choose whether
they wish to read text or watch a video.
Then when they’ve taken in the information, they are presented with some quick questions
to check understanding.
Let’s explore how this lesson is made:
Our teacher adds a lesson by turning on the editing, selecting Lesson from the activity
chooser and giving it a name and description, which can be displayed on the course page
by ticking the box.
Other settings can be expanded by clicking the links.
Appearance: Show more displays all possible options.
(Administrators can decide what displays by default and what is accessed from the link)
The help icons give more information about each setting.
A file useful during the Lesson can be uploaded
in the Linked media section and will display in a block on the desktop or a button on the
Moodle app.
A percentage progress bar, a menu, ie list of pages can be displayed.
The figure in the Maximum number of answers defines the response options our teacher has
for each lesson page – and can easily be changed later.
Availability: lessons can have a time limit and password, but a time limit cannot be used
if student are going to do the lesson offline, on the Moodle app.
Flow control Here we can let students review – but not
repeat – the lesson; let them try questions again and decide how often and what happens
when they answer correctly.
Other settings are similar to other activities but it’s worth knowing that in Activity
completion you can specify a minimum time spent before the lesson is marked complete.
Saving and displaying takes our teacher to the Edit tab to decide what to add first.
NOTE – it is helpful to plan your lesson structure in advance so you know where you’re
heading. Existing questions can be imported in certain
formats…
A cluster is a group of question pages which appear randomly to students.
Find out more in the documentation A content page contains information while
a question page offers a type of question, for example multiple choice.
Let’s first look at the content page: Lessons can contain text, images, videos and
links.
Once our teacher has added the content, it’s important to make the connections – the”jumps”
to subsequent pages.
This is why it is really important to have planned your lesson structure first so you know where you're jumping to!
This is the first page and here are the options to ‘jump to’ We’ll leave them as they are
for now as we haven’t made any other pages, but when there are other pages, these
will appear as names in the list of options.
So our first jump will be to a video page
and our second jump will be to a text page. We'll leave them as they are for now.
Saving the page displays its title, type (content) jumps and actions - deleting, editing, duplicating, adding a
new page etc.
We’re seeing the collapsed tab.
The expanded tab shows the same information but in more detail.
Most times you’ll be happy with the collapsed tab.
We need to add two pages, one with a video and one with text.
So we click Add a new page – Add content page and add our video. In the jumps. let's give the option of going back to read the text..
and also of testing yourself
Then we need to click again, add a new page, add a content page and add our text page.
Now let's look at those jumps.
Our lesson isn’t going to work until we fix the path through the pages, so we return
to the First page and go the jumps.
Now the video page is visible as an option, so we can link to it, and we can link to the
text page as the second option.We need to repeat this for other pages.
Finally, a question page will test the learner’s understanding, so we click to add a question
page and decide the type of question, perhaps multiple choice?
Answers can include links, media and images
When the student gets the question correct, we can - if desired – direct them to the
end of the lesson.If the student gets the answer wrong we can if we want to
make them remain on the same page until they get it right.
Here's the editing screen of the finished lesson:
It’s important to check all the jumps are correct, with named pages
Don't rely on 'next' or 'previous' page, even if you think your navigation is OK.
What students see
As our student navigates through the lesson, remember we added a 'time required' completion
condition to ensure she read or watched the materials thoroughly.
If she reaches the end of the lesson before the required time, she won't be
allowed to complete it yet.
Lesson has many other settings and features which we don't have time for here.
Again, the Moodle documentation can give you more information.
To summarise: Lesson allows you to create
a personalised experience for your learners.