Using Moodle

Effective Lesson Practices

Lessons can be an interesting change of pace for your students. They may require more upfront development time than many other types of tools, but they do provide some benefits. The two basic lesson types, branching quizzes and flash-cards are relatively easy to set up.

Branching Quizzes

The most basic lesson structure is branching quiz. You use branches to organize sets of questions around different topics or concepts in your course. Each branch of the quiz leads to a linear series of pages and test questions and then returns to the main branch. The main-branch page acts as a table of contents for the lesson, as shown in Figure 10-4.

Figure 10-4. Branching quiz schematic

If you decide to build this type of lesson, be sure to include a link to the end of the lesson on the main page. If not, the students will have no way of ending the lesson and recording their score.

If you create a lesson with a branch table and strings of questions, be sure to set a reasonable minimum number of questions. Otherwise, students will be able to visit one branch and receive a maximum score for the lesson, even though they didn’t look at any other branches.

To create a branching quiz:

1. Create the lesson and the first question page by following the instructions.

2. Create a question page for the first question in each branch.

3. Create a branch table with a branch for each of the questions you ...