Note: You are currently viewing documentation for Moodle 3.6. Up-to-date documentation for the latest stable version of Moodle is likely available here: Lesson settings.

Lesson settings

From MoodleDocs

Template:Lessons This page is about lesson settings (update this lesson) that can be changed by the teacher when they view the lesson in edit mode. There are excellent help files once Lesson settings window has been open. After selecting lesson with the "Add activity" pull down menu, Moodle will first show the lesson settings page. At any point in the design or compilation of the lesson, it is possible (almost desirable in some cases) to edit the lesson settings by using the "Update the Lesson" button.

After reviewing the lesson settings and saving them, you(the teacher) will jump back to the page list with its insert, edit, move or delete potentials.

There is some difference between Moodle 1.5 and 1.6 with additional settings. Please note that the settings group category is shown.

General

Name

Lesson name, HTML code will not work in 1.9

Timed

This puts a time limit on the lesson. Students are shown a JavaScript counter and the time is recorded in the database. Due to the inconsistent nature of JavaScript, the timer does not evict a student from the lesson when the time is up, however a question answered after the time limit is not counted. The time in the database is checked each time a student submits a question.

The Maximum Number of Answers / Branches in a Lesson

This value determines the maximum number of answers the teacher can see and use when editing a lesson or a page. The default value is 4. This is a useful feature in older versions of Moodle that have no collapsed view. This value can reduce the number of screens a teacher might see in the lesson edit mode.

This parameter also sets the maximum number of Branches that can be seen by the teacher in a Branch Table.

It is safe to change the value of this parameter at any time. It only effects what the teacher sees, not the data. For example, a teacher starting to enter a series of multiple choice questions with 6 answers, might set this value to 6. Then when the teacher starts to enter a series of questions with 2 answers, they might set this value to 2 because they don't need to see 4 blank answers for every question in the design phase.

In a similar manner, changing the value does not effect what the student sees when they view a branch page, nor does it change previous information put in by the teacher.

Grade Options

Practice Lesson

A practice lesson will not show up in the Gradebook. A practice lesson can not be a dependent lesson.

Custom Scoring

This will allow you to put a numerical point value on each answer. Answers may have negative values or positive values. Imported questions will automatically be assigned 1 point for correct answers and 0 for incorrect, though you may change this after the import.

Maximum Grade

This value determines the maximum grade which can be awarded in the lesson. The range is 0 to 100%. This value can be changed at any time during the lesson. Any change has an immediate effect in the Grades page and on the grades shown to the students in various lists. If the grade is set to 0 the Lesson does not appear in any of the Grades pages.

User can re-take

This setting determines whether the students can take the lesson more than once or only once. The teacher may decide that the lesson contains material which the students ought to know thoroughly. In which case repeated viewing of the lesson should be allowed. If, however, the material is used more like an exam then the students should not be allowed to re-take the lesson.

When the students are allowed to re-take the lesson, the grades shown in the Grades page are either their average grade over the re-takes or their best grade for the lesson. The next parameter determines which of these two grading alternatives is used.

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

By default this option is Yes, meaning that students are allowed to re-take the lesson. It is expected that only in exceptional circumstances will this option be set to No.

Handling of Re-takes

When students are allowed to re-take the lesson, this option allows the teacher to show the grade for the lesson in, for example, the Grades page, as either the mean, this is average, of the grades over the first and subsequent tries or as the grade from the students' best tries.

This option can be changed at any time.

Display ongoing score

This setting will allow the student to see their current score.

Flow Control

Allow Student Review

This will place a "Review Lesson" button on the last screen of the lesson to encourage the to student navigate through the lesson again from the start. Be sure to check other settings to allow them to change their answers.

Display Review Button

This will display a button after an incorrectly answered question, allowing a student to re-attempt it.

TIP: It is not compatible with essay questions, so leave this off if you are using essay questions. Sometimes this setting will override any "display default feedback" lesson setting, where the default feedback will always be displayed when the review button is shown.

The Maximum Number of Attempts (by a Student)

This value determines the maximum number of attempts a Student has in answering any of the questions in the lesson. Once reached, the student does not see the question again.

The default value is 5. Smaller values may discourage the student from trying different answers about a question. Larger values may lead to frustration when the student "does not get it". For example with a short answer or numerical question, the student is not given an opportunity to try different answer choices. This value provides an escape route to the next page in the lesson.

Setting this value to 1 gives the students just single chance to answer each question. This would be similar to a question in the Quiz module.

Note: this value is student global parameter and that it applies to all the questions in the lesson regardless of their type. However it does not apply to teachers checking of questions or navigating through the lesson. Checking the number of attempts relies on values stored in the database and question attempts by teachers are not recorded. The teacher should after all know the answers!

Action after a Correct Answer

The usual action is to follow the jump as specified in the answer. In most cases this will probably show the Next Page of the lesson. The student is taken through the lesson in a logical way, beginning at the start and ending at the end.

However, the lesson module can also be used as a type of Flash Card assignment. The student is shown some information (optional) and a question in basically a random order. There is no set beginning and no set end. Just a set of Cards shown one after another in no particular order.

This option allows two very similar variants of Flash Card behavior. The option "Show an unseen page" never shows the same page twice (even if the student did not answer the question associated with the Card/Page correctly). The other non-default option "Show an unanswered page" allows the student to see pages that may have appeared before but only if they answered the associated question wrongly.

In either of these Flash Card-type lessons the teacher can decide to use either all the Cards/Pages in the lesson or just a (random) sub-set. This is done through the "Number of Pages (Cards) to show" parameter.

If you want a student to be taken directly from one question to the next irrespective of their answer being correct or incorrect: in the Lesson Settings, set Maximum number of attempts: to 1. Please note, however, that a message "correct / incorrect" will still be displayed to the student upon answering each question. If you do not want this (default) feedback message to be displayed then enter your own feedback message (i.e. "continue", "---", etc.) In case you want no visible message displayed then enter a non-breaking space as feedback, so you'll have to put a # after the answer which may be ~3 and write & n b s p ; after that.(without spaces between these characters) To find out how Moodle works - you may export a sample of your questions with GIFT and check them out!

Display default feedback

Template:Moodle 1.7 Feedback to a specific answer to a question can appear on the next page after the student makes a choice and submits it. The question, the student's answer and the feedback appear on a page with a continue button at the bottom. This lesson setting controls what appears as the feedback response and if the page appears at all.

When this option is set to Yes, the standard default response will appear. In most lessons, when this is set to yes, Lesson first looks for the teachers custom feedback and if it does not find one, will put in the default feedback. It is possible to change the words used in the standard default feedbacks for the entire MoodleSite.

Selecting No, will only show the teacher's supplied feedbacks for each specific answer. If the teacher has not entered a response for a specific answer, then the feedback page is not displayed and the student will immediately go to the page that the specific answer's jump is set to.

TIP: Under some versions of Moodle, other lesson settings may cause the default feedback to appear, even when the teacher has supplied their own feedback. Changing the "Review button" lesson setting to "No" will show the teachers custom feedback.

The Minimum Number of Questions in a Lesson

This value determines the minimum number of questions that will be used to calculate a student's score. It does not force students to answer that many questions in the lesson. When a lesson contains one or more branches, the teacher should normally set this parameter.

For example, setting this parameter to 20, will ensure that grades are given as though the students have seen at least this number of questions. Take the case of a student who only looks at a single branch in a lesson with 5 pages and answers all the associated questions correctly. This student then choose to end the lesson (assuming there is that option in the "top level"Branch Table, a reasonable enough assumption). If this parameter was set to 0 their grade would be 5 out of 5, that is 100%. However, with it set to 20 their grade would be reduced to 5 out of 20, that is 25%. In the case of another student who goes through all the branches and sees, say, 25 pages and answers all but two of the questions correctly, then their grade would be 23 out of 25, that is 92%.

If this parameter is used, the teacher might want to add a statement on the opening page of the lesson. For example, if the teacher set the value to 20 they might say:

In this lesson you are expected to attempt at least 20 questions. You can attempt more if you wish. However, if you attempt less than 20 questions your grade will be calculated as though you attempted 20.

When this parameter is set to a value more than 0, students are told how many questions they have attempted and how many they are expected to attempt.

Number of Pages (Cards) to Show

This parameter is only used in Flash Card type lessons. The default value is zero which means that all the Pages/Cards are shown in a lesson. Setting this parameter to a non-zero value shows that number of pages. After that number of Page/Cards have been shown the end of lesson is reached and the student is shown their grade.

If this parameter is set to a number greater than the number of pages in the lesson then the end of the lesson is reached when all the pages have been shown.


Lesson formatting

Slide Show

This enables the display of the lesson as a slide show, with a fixed width, height, and custom background color. A CSS based scroll bar will be displayed if the width or height of the slide is exceeded by the content of a page. Questions will 'break out' of the slide show mode, only pages (branch tables) will be shown in a slide by default. Buttons labeled with the lang default for "Next" and "Back" will be shown at the far right and left of the slide if that option is chosen on the page. Other buttons will be centered below the slide. You can also decide on the width, height and the background colour of the slide show.

Display Left Menu

This will show a list of the pages (Branch Tables) in the lesson. Question pages, cluster pages, etc. will not be shown by default (you may choose to show question pages by checking that option on the question).

Progress bar

A simple bar at the bottom of the lesson which will give an approximate percentage of completion. Since lessons vary greatly in their navigation, this works best with lesson that follow the logical order and do not jump around.

Access control

Password Protected Lesson

This will not allow a student to access the lesson unless they type the password.

Dependent on

Template:Moodle 1.6 In Version 1.6 a lesson can be dependent upon another lesson. There are 3 possible dependencies which can be use separately or in combination with each other. Time Spent (minutes) refers to how long the student was in the lesson on their last attempt (it is not cumulative). Completed means the student has attempted one question. Grade as a percentage of a specific lesson means just that.

TIP: Dependency not working when is sent to "Completed" on another lesson? You must have a question for lesson to recognize that it is complete. Put a multiple choice question at the end of the lesson and ask: "In this lesson you learned A, B, and C." Do not put in an answer or a jump. The student will see "Continue" at the end and go to the end of the lesson and fulfil the requirement of completing the lesson. The dependent on lesson can not be a practice lesson.

Available from & deadline dates

Determine the dates for the opening and closing of the lesson. For example in Moodle 1.7 it is possible to close the course in the year 2020.

Other

Link to activity

Upon completion of the lesson, use the pull down menu to offer a choice for the student to go to another activity.

Pop-up to file or web page

At the start of the lesson, this creates a popup window. For example this might be a music file, an agreement or text which the student can refer while in the lesson.

Tree View

Found in pre 1.6 versions of Moodle. Similar to the setting under Lesson Formatting, display left menu in Moodle 1.6 and later.

Display High Scores

A list of the high scores for the lesson will be shown. Students who get a high score can choose a custom name to list their score by. There is a 'badwords' filter which checks for naughty names.

High scores do not display if the "Practice lesson" option is turned On.

Number of High Scores Displayed

Type a number to limit how many of the top scores are displayed.

Use this lesson's settings as defaults

Select yes before Saving the lesson, and the settings you have chosen for this lesson will be the default settings for the next time you create a lesson for this course.

Visible to users

Allows you to show to, or to hide the lesson from students.

Common module settings

  • Groupings (advanced):
  • Available for groups only check box (advanced)
  • Visable
  • ID number
  • Grade category

Adding the first page in a Lesson

After you decide on the lesson settings (above), you are taken to the lesson and you are asked which of the following you want to do now: import questions, add a Branch Table or add a Question Page. To read more about adding pages go to: Viewing_a_lesson. If you would like more information about lesson pages in general go to Lesson Pages or select something from the index at the top of this page or one of the overall indexes below.

See also