Lesson settings

Lesson administration settings

This page explains the settings involved when first creating a lesson. To add a lesson to your Moodle course page:

• With the editing turned on, in the section you wish to add your lesson, click the "Add an activity or resource" link (or, if not present, the "Add an activity" drop down menu) and choose Lesson All settings may expanded by clicking the "Expand all" link top right.

General

General settings expanded by default

Name

Whatever you type here will form the link learners click on to view the lesson so it is helpful to give it a name that suggests its purpose.

Description

Add a description of your lesson here.

Display description on the course page

If this box is ticked, the description will appear on the course page just below the name of the lesson.

Appearance

(These settings are collapsed by default)

Appearance settings expanded

File pop

If you want to include a link to a file on the lesson page for students to refer to, upload it here.

Progress bar

Choose this to show a bar at the bottom of the page showing how far into the lesson the student has got.

• For lessons containing only Content pages, once a lesson has been taken to the end, if that same lesson is re-taken, the progress bar will not be "reset", i.e. it will show a 100% progress from page 1!

• For lessons containing Question pages and set to "Re-take" Yes, the progress bar is always "reset" at 0% upon re-take.

• Note that the Lesson Progress bar only works correctly for lessons with a "straightforward" navigation, such as page 1 -> page 2 -> page n -> end of lesson. It is not guaranteed to work with pages "jumping all over the place".

Display ongoing score

Choose this to let students see their score as they work through the lesson.

Display left menu

Choose this when you want to show a list of the content page titles in the Lesson to the student. Only those pages which have "Display in menu?" checked will display. The left menu will not display question pages.

Minimum grade to display menu

Choose this if you want the student to go through the lesson once and get a grade before they can (on review) see and navigate through all the different pages.

Slideshow

Slideshow height, width and background colour are set for the whole site by an administrator in Settings > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Lesson.

Maximum Number of Answers

Here you can set the default number of selection boxes available when you add or edit a question or content page. For instance, if you are only going to use Multiple Choice questions with 3 answers in your lesson, you might select 3. You can change the default here at any time to display more or less question answers or content choices.

Note: This only impacts the editing screen. Changing from 4 to 2 will not remove or hide any answers previously entered from the student.

Use default feedback

Every Moodle site has a standard response (feedback) when a student selects a correct or wrong answer in a lesson. Select "No" if you only what you put as a response for a specific question's answer to display. In this case, when you leave the response to a question blank, the student will not see any comment about their answer. The typical Moodle standard responses are: "That's the correct answer" or "That's the wrong answer".

Link to next activity

Choose this to give students a link to another activity when they reach the end of the lesson. (Note: this can also be achieved using Conditional activities)

Availability

(These settings are collapsed by default)

Availability settings expanded

Available from/Deadline

Here you can set a start and end date and time for your Lesson.

Time limit

This allows you to set a time limit on the lesson which can now be seconds, minutes, hours, days or weeks. Students will see a countdown counter in a block as they work.

The timer does not stop them doing the lesson when the time is up, but correct answers are no longer scored.

Password protected lesson

• Change to "Yes" and enter the password if you want students only to access it when they know the password.

Prerequisite lesson

• Note: You will only see this setting if you have a course with prerequisite lessons upgraded from an earlier version of Moodle.
• You will see a warning that prerequisites are due to be removed completely.
• Please use access restrictions instead. See Conditional activities for more information.

Flow control

(These settings are collapsed by default)

Flow control settings expanded

Allow Student Review

This puts a "Review Lesson" button on the last screen of the lesson to encourage the students to navigate through the lesson again from the start.

Note that the students will not be able to change their answers, only view them.

Provide option to try a question again

• This displays a button after an incorrectly answered question so that the student can try again (but not get credit for it)

TIP: Leave this off if you are using essay questions. 

Maximum Number of Attempts

• Decide here how many times you want students to be able to attempt each question. When they reach the maximum, they will be taken automatically to the next page.

Note: this setting works in combination with the above setting, or independently.

• When 'provide an option to try again' is set to No, students will be able to retake the question as many times as it is set here, with a score penalty.

• When 'provide an option to try again' is set to Yes, then students will be able to retake the question as many times as it set here without a score penalty. In this case an extra dialogue appears.

Consequently when the relevant jump 'this page' is used in wrong answer while the 'provide an option to try again' is set to No and 'maximum number of attempts' is set to 1, a student that will answer wrongly will be moved into the next page, since he/she has the change to try the question just once.

Tip: Ensure you check lesson using a real student account, as the teacher preview or the 'switch role to student' may not give you the exact picture.

Action after a Correct Answer

Choose here where you want a student to be sent to if they get a question right. See Using Lesson for more details on this setting. The options are:

• • the next part of the Lesson (default setting)
  • a random, unexpected page
  • a random page which they have not yet answered.

Number of pages to show

You only need this if you have set "Action after a correct answer" to show an unseen or unanswered page. Otherwise, all pages will be seen

Grade

(These settings are collapsed by default.)

Grade settings expanded

Set a grade and grade category here, along with a "Grade to pass" which may be connected with Activity completion and Conditional activities such that a student will not be able to access a follow up activity until they have obtained the required grade in the lesson.

Practice lesson

Practice lessons are now saved; this means they will appear in the reports .You must enable the "Retakes allowed" setting if you want students to be able to attempt a practice lesson several times.

Note: If you are upgrading from an earlier version, be aware that all practice lessons will have " Re-takes allowed" set to "Yes" . If you are restoring a practice lesson made before this change, you may need to modify the "Re-takes allowed" setting if needed.

Custom Scoring

Use this to give a particular number score (negative or positive) to each answer

Re-takes allowed

Choose this if you want your students to be able to do the lesson more than once.

Note that this setting only applies to lessons containing Question pages. Lessons consisting only of Content pages can be re-taken even if 'Re-takes allowed' is set to No.

Handling of re-take

If you allow your students to re-take the lesson, then decide here if the grade for all lesson attempts is the mean or the maximum.

Note that the Question Analysis always uses the answers from the first tries of the lesson. Re-takes by students are ignored.

Minimum Number of Questions

Set here the minimum number of questions that will be used to calculate a student's score. Students will be told how many they have answered and how many more they need to answer.

• If you are using Content pages, then set this to 0.
• If you use this setting, then add some explanatory text at the start of the lesson so the student knows how many questions they must answer as a minimum. (They may answer more.

Common module settings

• Visible
• ID number
• Group mode - this setting has no impact in the Lesson setting activity
• Groupings - this setting has no impact, other than showing the grouping as a label for the teacher next to a lesson.

See Common module settings

Access restrictions

Restrict access must be turned on in the site settings for this to appear. (These settings are collapsed by default)

• Grade - limit to overall grade or specific grade on another activity
• Group - limit to specific group
• Groupings - limit to specific groupings
• User profile - limit based upon user profile fields
• Restriction set - nest restrictions
• The Restrict access and Activity completion settings are visible if Conditional activities and Activity completion have been enabled in the site and the course.

Activity completion

Activity completion must be turned on in the site settings for this to appear. (These settings are collapsed by default)

• Completion tracking - 3 options
• Required view
• Required grade
• Required end reached
• Required time spent
• Expected completion on

User and group overrides

When a lesson has been created, it is possible to overrride certain settings for individuals and groups. The settings for this are located in the Lesson administration block:

It is possible to override passwords, availability/deadline, time limits and question retries and lesson retakes. Selecting one of the options, for example 'User' will display a button to click. From the next screen you can choose the user or group to override and the settings you wish to override:

When the override is saved, it is displayed on a screen along with any other overrides previously set:

Site administration settings

The lesson module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Lesson.

Slideshow width

Sets the width of the slideshow only when this feature is enabled in a Lesson's "Change settings".

• Variable name: lesson_slideshowwidth, Default 640.

Slideshow height

Sets the height of the slideshow only when this feature is enabled in a Lesson's "Change settings".

• Variable name: lesson_slideshowheight, Default 480.

Slideshow background colour

Background colour to for the slideshow if it is enabled.

• Variable name: lesson_slideshowbgcolor, Default #FFFFFF.

Popup window width

Sets the width of the popup displayed for a linked media file

• Variable name: lesson_mediawidth, Default 640.

Popup window height

Sets the height of the popup displayed for a linked media file

• Variable name: lesson_mediaheight, Default 480.

Show close button:

Displays a close button as part of the popup generated for a linked media file

• Variable name: lesson_mediaclose, Default No.

Maximum number of answers

Default Lesson activity maximum number answers per question and choices per content page for the site.

• Variable name: lesson_maxanswers, Default: 4.

Action after correct answer

The default action to take after a correct answer

• Variable name: lesson_defaultnextpage, Default: Normal - follow lesson path

See also

• Moodle 2.x Lesson (part 1) MoodleBites video on YouTube
• Moodle 2.x Lesson (part 2) MoodleBites video on YouTube
• Moodle 2.x Lesson (part 3) MoodleBites video on YouTube