Using Moodle

Chapter 10. Lessons

When I was growing up, I enjoyed reading a series of books called Choose Your Own Adventure. Written in second person, they placed the reader into the story as the main character. Each chapter was a page or two long ended with a choice of actions. I could choose the action I wanted to take and turn to the appropriate page to see what happened. I could then make another choice and turn to that page, and so on until the story ended or my character died, which happened with disturbing regularity.

The Moodle lesson tool is a lot like the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Each page in the lesson can have a question at the bottom of the page. The resulting page depends on the answer the student gives. You can create branching paths through the material based on the selections students make at each page.

With branching lessons, you can create programmed learning opportunities in which each correct answer brings up a new piece of information and a new question. You can also easily create flash-card lessons and, with a little creativity, you can use the lesson module to create simulations and case studies to respond to student input which results in a degree of interactivity.

There are two basic page types in the lesson module. The question page presents the student with a question, and the student has to enter a correct answer. After a student submits his answer, he will see the response you’ve created and will be taken to another page or looped back to the same page. Question ...