Overview
This page is a guide on how to create a Lesson in Moodle.
A Lesson presents to your students a series of HTML pages of either lesson content or questions (which can be graded or not).
A lesson page generally requires students to make some sort of choice once they have read the content or answered the questions. Their choice determines which page they are shown next in the sequence.
Moodle Lesson Video
When to use
You can create very simple sequences within the Lesson tool, or you can set up complex, many-branched structures that tailor the learning very closely to students' needs.
Benefits
If planned well, a lesson can present content and questions that can be customized to individual students with no further intervention from the teacher.
This is useful when you are, for example, orienting a class of students in your course whose basic knowledge level you are unsure of; you can lead students through the information, indicate to those with less knowledge the kinds of reading they should do to catch up, or direct those who find the questions impossible to contact their tutors for assistance.
A Lesson can also be used effectively for managing formative assessments in the course.
Guide
Step by step instructions
Create a Lesson in Moodle
- On the course homeage, click Turn editing on
.
- In the relevant week or topic, click Add an activity or resource, then in the pop-up generated, select Lesson and click Add.
- On the Adding a new Lesson page, click Expand all at the upper right to display all the available page sections.
- In the General section, enter a Name and an optional Description.
- Under Appearance:
- If desired, attach the appropriate file to display as a File pop-up at the start of a lesson. Every page of the lesson can include a link to re-open this pop-up if you want.
- Select whether you want to display a Progress bar at the bottom of the lesson pages, showing the percentage of the course that the user has completed.
- Select whether you want each page to Display ongoing score, that is, the user's points earned thus far.
- Select whether you want to Display left menu containing a list of lesson pages.
- If you wish, set a Minimum grade to display menu. You might want students to go through the entire lesson the first time, then on achieving the desired grade the left menu becomes available to them to use for reviewing.
- Select whether the lesson is to display as a Slideshow, with a fixed width and height.
- The Maximum number of answers only affects what the teacher sees; use it to specify the maximum number of answer options that can be used in a lesson. For example, if you are only using True/False questions, you can set this to 2.
- Select whether you want to Use default feedback, i.e. "That's the correct answer/That's the wrong answer", for any questions asked.
- If you want to present, at the end of the lesson, a Link to next activity, select that activity from the drop-down list.
- Under Availability:
- Enable and complete the Available from and Deadline fields.
- Enable and set a Time limit (minutes) if required.
- If you wish, make this a Password protected lesson by selecing Yes and entering a Password.
- Under Flow control:
- Select whether to Allow student review, i.e. students can go back through the lesson before exiting.
- Select whether you want to Provide option to try a question again with no point credit, if a student answers a questions wrongly.
- Set the Maximum number of attempts at each question. When this maximum is reached, the next lesson page will display.
- Select the Action after correct answer. The options are as follows:
- Normal = the next page in the lesson is shown
- Show an unseen page = pages display in random order; no page displays twice
- Show an unanswered page = pages containing unanswered questions display again, in random order
- If you selected anything other than Normal in the previous field, set the Number of pages to show in the course of a lesson. If you set this to 0, all pages are shown.
- Under Grade:
- Select the maximum Grade that can be attained in the lesson.
- Select the Grade category.
- Select whether you want this to be a Practice lesson, i.e. not to display in the Gradebook.
- If you enable Custom scoring, you can give each answer an individual numerical point value, positive or negative.
- With Re-takes allowed, students can attempt the lesson more than once.
- If you selected Yes for Re-takes, select whether you want the mark for the lesson to be the main mark or the maximum of the student's attempts.
- If you wish, set the Minimum number of questions to be used to calculate a mark. If the lesson contains one or more content pages, leave this setting as 0. If you set it to another number, add the following text to the lesson's opening page: "In this lesson you are expected to attempt at least [chosen number of] questions. You can attempt more if you wish; however, if you attempt fewer than [chosen number], your grade will be calculated as though you attempted [chosen number]."
- Complete the remaining sections as necessary.
- Click Save and display, and go to the Build a lesson instructions to build the lesson within the shell you have just created.
Build a Lesson
If you have just completed the instructions above, the Edit screen for the lesson will be displaying. If you are using an existing lesson shell and starting on the course home page, click the Update icon for the lesson, then in the Updating screen, in the Settings block, under Lesson administration, click Edit (not Edit settings).
- In the Edit screen, a choice of actions displays. (All of these are self-explanatory, except for Add a cluster. A cluster is a group of question pages that are offered randomly to students as they progress through the lesson. You need to have created the question pages before you can add them as a cluster. This MoodleDocs page about clusters tells you all about this advanced lesson feature.) Select the action you want to perform.
- For further instructions and assistance building your lesson, consult this MoodleDocs page, Building Lesson. The page takes you through all five actions, showing you how to add content and questions, how to move students through the lesson (using jumps, explained further on this page), and how to bring the lesson to a satisfactory close.
View lesson reports
To access reports relating to a lesson:
- On the course home page, click the lesson's link.
- In the Settings block, click Lesson administration > Reports.
- Select one of the 2 types of reports available: Overview or Detailed statistics.
Overview
The Overview report contains all student names, their lesson attempts (displayed as a percentage of completion, with last access and total time spent on the lesson) and the highest score from any attempt. Clicking See all course grades at the upper right takes you to the Grader Report in the Gradebook.
Detailed statistics
The Detailed statistics report delivers data on individual questions.The question/content slide displays, followed by the available answer options or jump actions. For questions (for example multiple choice) all options display, along with (under Class Statistics) the cohort percentage of participants who selected each available option. Just as with the Overview report, instructors can click See all course grades to move to the Grader Report in the Gradebook.
Further information
For more information about generating course logs and statistics, go to the Generate reports in Moodle page.
Advanced guide
For information on how lessons work, and ideas on how to use them, look at the following Moodle Docs pages:
Additional information
FAQ / Troubleshooting
See the Moodle Docs page Lesson FAQ.
Further assistance
If you experience technical or other issues, consult the Where to get help page.