Lesson activity module 2
| Logging activity module 2 | |
|---|---|
| Project state | Planning |
| Tracker issue | None as yet |
| Discussion | None as yet |
| Assignee | |
Initial participants
Tim Hunt, Martin Dougiamas, Michael de Raadt, Michael Hughes, Michael Aherne, Phineas Head, Afroditi Loukidou, Ruslan Kabalin, Kevin Mueller, Jonathan Moore, Michelle Moore
History of the Lesson module
- Made by Mark Nielson at Humboldt ~2004. The original idea was to allow a student to navigate through resources, much like "Choose-your-own-adventure" or "Pick-a-path" books.
- Lots of ideas added over time.
- Progression controlled by a huge switch statement.
- Moodle questions were copied from the quiz in 1.5 in 2005.
- The questions were further refactored to be more modular and reusable in 2.1 in 2009, but the Lesson module was left with its original set of questions.
- Since then kept alive with minor changes.
Criticisms of the old Lesson module
- It's purpose, in relation to other standard activity module plugins, is unclear. There is overlap with other modules: Page and Book share its ability to disseminate course material, the Quiz module can be used for multi-page questioning, the Assignment module covers essay type questions and SCORM modules can also achieve a similar function as the Lesson module.
- The navigation model is complex and deters teachers from creating Lessons.
- The grading model is complex (when it works) and is hard for students to determine how their marks are calculated.
- It is poorly maintained.
- Its question types are not linked to core question engine.
General plan for the Lesson module
- To clarify the purpose of the module, possibly dropping some features to allow it to be more focussed.
- To create a simpler navigation, utilising visual and interactive maps, that allow teachers to create Lessons easily and help students navigating through them.
- To simplify grading and completion so that these are easy to define for teachers and simply understood by students.
Purpose for the new Lesson module
Where does the lesson fit in within the scheme of existing standard activities and resources?
The scope of the Lesson activity should be simplified to cover what is really used by people. More complex cases can be achieved using Quiz, Assignment, SCORM editors, etc..
In the previous Lesson module, control over navigation was limited by the form elements available in HTML4.
The navigation is something that could really be improved. Teachers could be visually adding pages to a map and adjusting the transitions between them.
Students could be presented with a representation of the navigation to show where they are within the lesson, and possibly where their peers are at the same time.
Inspiring ideas
In a brainstorming exercise, the following ideas were mentioned as possibly inspiring a new
- Remember hypercard? (Clickable hot-spots for navigation).
- Duolingo style maps/progression
- Path analysis (e.g. heat maps)
- Google calendar event creation when adding new pages to map
- GraphViz
- GoogleDraw
- Nice conceptual model: software modular synthesizer (e.g. http://www.patchwork-synth.com/ ) -- imagine each module is a ‘page’ and each wire is a ‘question’ or ‘activity’ the learner has to do
- DOT graph drawing library
- AlloyUI - diagram builder (BSD License)
- Y.Anim - https://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/anim/curve.html
- Option 1
- Page with Buttons/arrows/images at bottom of page
- Option 2
- Page with Buttons/arrows/images in different places on page (could be image map). Perhaps start with Option 1 then allow button/arrow/image to be moved within page.
- Option 3
- Page with question from question bank that triggers transition based on answer
Grading
Summative vs formative grading
The purpose of the Lesson module is primarily as an interactive resource. The focus of assessment in the Lesson module should therefore be formative and grading should reflect the completion of the understanding formed by the student as they have completed the Lesson activity.
Possible grading strategies
- Grade based on reaching a particular endpoint (one may be 100%, another may be 0%, there may be endpoints worth less)
- Additive (add up points for correct answers until you hit a threshold)
- Subtractive grading...Start with an idealised path that is 100% goal and points lost, rather than addition of points with each successful task
Possible completion strategies
- Completion is defined as reaching the end of a branch, or possibly a specified end page.
- Completion defined as a set of required points. IE example of open world game quests with no defined path but 5 key locations must be visited.
Analytics
What should we track? node? timeing? transition?
Common features
The following features are non-optional features of a revised Lesson module.
- Pages (start, intermediate and end pages)
- The start page would be a single page that is special because it is the page the student first encounters.
- End pages are pages at the end of branches. There could be transitions back to other pages. End pages may have a grade and completion status associated with them.
- Branching between pages of content
- Completion (for outcomes, conditional availability etc)
- Map for designing lesson structure
- Map that shows student progression through lesson (optionally shown to student)
- Accessible options for lesson creation
Tasks to be completed
- Data gathering on current lesson activity usage from databases on existing sites.
- Make a survey to see what current lesson users want.
- What features are they using?
- What events are important to log?
- Make some mockups of various possible designs, and consult teachers about them.
Related ideas (out of scope for here)
- Create a Filter + Atto button that lets the teacher embed a question in any content. (Probably done by putting something like question/preview.php in an iframe.)
- Activity level vs Course level? If a mapping interface is created to design Lesson activities, elements of that could potentially be used as a course design tool that uses activities/resources instead of pages and uses completion to control transitions.
