Lesson settings

This page explores in more detail the settings for the Lesson activity once you have added it to your course and also covers the Site administration settings.

General

In the Description, provide instructions for students. Check the box if you want these instructions to display on the course page.

Appearance

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 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 menu will not display question pages.

Depending on the what the administrator has specified as 'Advanced', other settings will be displayed by clicking a 'Show more' link:

Linked media

If you want to include a link to a media file for students to refer to, upload it here. A 'Click here to view' link will be displayed in a block called 'Linked media' on each page of the lesson.

The width and height of the pop-up window may be set by an admin in Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Lesson.

Display ongoing score

Choose this to let students see their score as they work through the lesson. It won't display for teachers previewing the activity.

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 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.

Availability

As well as selecting here a start and end date and time for your lesson, you can set a time limit and/or password.

Allow lesson to be attempted offline

Enable this setting if you want students to do the activity on the Moodle app. It will be be downloaded, done offline and then resynched. by a mobile app user. Note: You cannot use this setting if you have set a time limit on your Lesson.

Flow control

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. If the lesson contains questions then the review will start from the first question, otherwise the review will start from the first content page.

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). If the student clicks to move on to another question then the selected (wrong) answer jump will be followed. By default wrong answer jumps are set to "this page", so it is recommended that you set the wrong answer jump to a different page to avoid confusion with your students.

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.

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.

Depending on the what the administrator has specified as 'Advanced', other settings will be displayed by clicking a 'Show more' link:

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

Set a grade and grade category here, along with a "Grade to pass" which may be connected with Activity completion and Restrict access 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.

Depending on the what the administrator has specified as 'Advanced', other settings will be displayed by clicking a 'Show more' link:

Handling of re-takes

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 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 the minimum number of questions they must answer to receive a grade.

Other settings

Depending on what is enabled for your site and course, you may also need to explore Common module settings, Restrict access and Activity completion

If your Lesson activity doesn't display as you wish, check the site settings below:

User and group overrides

When a lesson has been created, it is possible to overrride certain settings for individuals and groups from Lesson administration. In situations where two group overrides may apply to a single user, the most lenient date is used. For "Available from" dates, this means the earliest possible date is used, for "Deadline" dates, this means that the latest possible date is used. Note also that if there exists a user override for a student, it will always take precedence over any group overrides.

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 administrator can change the lesson's default settings and decide which lesson features to display to teachers in courses, and which features are 'Advanced'.
• Features which have the 'Advanced' box ticked only display when teachers click a 'Show more' link.
• This is useful for simplifying the lesson for teachers when it is first set up.
• The lesson settings can be reviewed from Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Lesson.