Course Overview

Getting Up to Speed with the Online Education Center's Course Management

The MySafe:LA Education Center has been designed for maximum flexibility. Note that while course content is being implemented by our team, the content can be manipulated to some degree by educators who wish to share specific information with their students. To give educators a better idea about how this process works, we've organized an overview into the courseware delivery system. Read the following materials to get a good idea about what to expect when working with the sytsem.

The Lesson Module

The lesson module presents a series of HTML pages to the student, who is typically asked to make a choice beneath the content area. The student-selected choice will direct them to a specific page within the Lesson. In a Lesson page's simplest form, the student can select a continue button at the bottom of the page, which will send them to the next page in the Lesson.

There are two basic Lesson page types that the student will see: question pages and branch table pages.

There are also several advanced navigational pages which can meet more specialized needs of the Teacher. The Lesson module was designed to be adaptive and to use a student's choices to create a self directed lesson. The significant difference between a Lesson and other activity tools available in the MySafe:LA Education Center is related to the system's adaptive ability. With this tool, each answer to a question may direct the student to a different series of pages in the lesson. The teacher's response and the next page the student will see has already been thought out by the teacher. Thus Lesson can deliver content in interesting and flexible ways to each student, with no direct or time sensitive action required by the teacher once the lesson has been created.

General information about the lesson and its methodology

For a student, a lesson is a series of interactive pages that require a choice on their part before the next page appears.

The choice determines the way the lesson appears to the student. The lesson can be a series of pages presented in a linear fashion, like a slide show, or presented in a non-linear, branching manner, or a combination of the two. The teacher can use the Lesson settings to create a different student experience for each lesson. There are also special navigation pages that the teacher may use to change the way parts of the lesson are viewed by students.

The student choice generally drives the lesson, which has been thought out by the teacher. For example, a particular answer might send the student back in the lesson for a review, while another answer will advance the student to a new page. Sometimes the student will only be given the choice to "continue". The lesson can be scored with the use of questions for a grade, or used simply as a resource of non-graded pages or a combination of both.

There are two basic modes: presentation and flash card. Most of the descriptions of a lesson in this document are about the presentation mode and the use of questions and branch pages. The Flash Card section describes how to make lesson pages appear randomly.

Presentation Lesson

The Lesson activity uses the standard Moodle HTML editor tool to make any page's content interesting. This tool can assist the teacher with pictures, links, fonts, tables and other graphics to engage the student's attention. Lesson also can keep students from straying from the lesson plan with various settings including, password protection, various time limits and dependency on a previous lesson's activity.

Navigation pages are only seen by the teacher but will effect the order of the pages the student views. For example, a cluster is a series of pages bracketed by a navigational pages called a "start cluster" and a "end of cluster" page. Navigation pages are an advanced feature and are best added after the teacher has laid out their lesson with the pages that will be seen by the student.

Pages, questions, answers and responses

A lesson is made up of pages. For the teacher there are two basic types of Lesson pages: choice and navigation.

The student sees choice pages called "Branch Tables" or Question pages. Branch tables deliver content and can provide links to one or more other pages in the lesson. Each question page can do the same but also can give an individual response and an individual score for each choice (the student's answer). The teacher decides upon the page type and how to best use its flexibility to achieve the educational goals of the specific Lesson or course.

For example, the default lesson question is a multiple choice page. The teacher might place content on the page and ask a question about it. The teacher can provide one to 20 answers. In a simple use of the multiple choice question, the teacher might decided to send the student back to the question again after a student selects a wrong answer, but move a correct answer to the next page. On some answers, the teacher may decide to provide some explanation before sending the student to the next step. Unlike a piece of paper, the answers are going to re-arrange themselves every time the student enters the question page. Of course the teacher can decide a more complex approach in constructing Lesson or a page. Using our multiple choice example,the teacher may give each answer a different score. And/or depending upon the answer, send the student to a different page for an appropriate review. The teacher may decide that a specific Lesson is a series of pages filled with information and only one choice (the continue button) that always sends the student to the next page, perhaps saving the question pages for the end.

Edit order and navigation order

The order of the pages of a lesson is usually determined by the material or the personal style of the teacher. A page feature called jumps determines what a student sees next. Once a lesson contains two or more pages the teacher can move existing pages around and add different kinds of pages to any position within the lesson.

The teacher sees the pages in what is called the edit order when they edit a lesson. The students see the lesson pages in the navigation order, which can also be seen by the teacher in preview mode. Most of the time we will be talking about the edit order from the teacher's perspective, rather than navigation order of the student.

Jumps are the primary tool the teacher will use to determine a students navigation. For example, each different answer to a question, might send the student to a different page. There are two types of jumps, relative and absolute. The default jumps used by most pages are the relative jumps "Next Page" and "This Page". For example, the destination of the Next Page jump is always the next page in the edit order of the lesson. An absolute jump sends the student to a specific page (identified by the page title). A pull down list of possible jumps assist the teacher in being creative. Thus jumps allow the teacher to design a lesson for the students with "branches", loops and a non-linear structure.

The teacher can see how a lesson's navigation "works" by using several preview tools. For example there is a Preview tab for the teacher when they open a lesson and there is also a preview icon associated with each page. It is possible for the Teacher to switch their role in the course to that of a student.

Answers

Typically each question within a lesson will have one correct answer and several wrong answers. For example, in a multiple choice question, each answer can receive an individual response from the teacher before sending the student (with a jump setting) to view the same or another page.

There are two ways to score an answer. In one method, the direction students are sent in the edit order of pages determines if the answer was correct or wrong for scoring purposes. Usually a correct answer advances the student in the edit order and wrong answers send the students back to the question page or back in the edit order. The other method uses custom scoring and an answer is given a score to calculate the grade.

When a question page is added, the jumps have a default setting. The jump for the first answer is the Next Page and it is a good practice to keep this as a right answer. The jumps for the subsequent answers are set to Same Page. The score for the first answer is 1 and for the rest 0. These settings can be changed by editing the question. Remember the order of the answers is going to be random each time a student enters the question page.

When Custom Scoring is turned On in the Lesson settings, then each answer has a point value associated with it. Usually a correct answer receives a score of 1 and a wrong answer receive a score 0. It is possible to give a negative score or partial credit (say 3 for the best answer and 1 for a marginal answer) in some question types.

Grading

A students answers to questions can be graded. The lesson scores and grades can be viewed on the "Reports" tab in edit mode and become part of the gradebook. A relatively simple formula is used to score the lesson. It is the number of correct answers divided by the number of question pages seen. This number score can be use by the grade scale.

When Custom Scoring is selected in the Lesson settings, then the grading method changes. With this option, the grade is based on earned points by the user, which is divided by the total points possible. When this option is turned on, the teacher can assign a score for each answer, this can be a negative or 0 (zero) or a positive number. Usually the score is 0 for a wrong answer and 1 for a correct answer. The point values associated with each of the user's answers are added up. That is then divided by the total of the maximum points that the user could have earned for each page answered. This number is then scaled by the grade parameter of the lesson.

The overall score is computed when the Lesson is completed by the student. A completed lesson usually means the student has viewed every page, or answered every question or is directed by a jump to the "end of lesson."

Grading can be continued when student leaves the lesson for some reason before completing it. The student does not have to go through the entire lesson in one "sitting." For example, if a student goes through some pages and then breaks off, the next time they view the lesson they are asked whether they want to start at the beginning of the lesson or at the point where they left off. The latter point is actually the page they reached with their last correct answer. The previous "attempts" are recorded and the grade for "broken" sessions will include pages seen and questions answered in the previous viewings.
The main focus of a lesson should be the transfer of knowledge in a reasonably interesting way. Giving a grade may well turn the lesson into a kind of quiz where giving the correct answer is the sole goal instead of exploring different ways of thinking about an idea. On the other hand, students like to get a perfect "score" and giving grades may well be the carrot needed to get the student to repeat the lesson until they get the magic 100%.
Some instructors use Lessons as Formative Assignments where the grades, although some measure of activity, are not generally counted in the final mark for the course. If lessons are used in a formal way then it is probably best to use their grades in thresholds.
Many instructors use lessons to get across chunks of knowledge. The grading options enable instructors to utilize the "Practice Principle" of eLearning, in which immediate practice in answering questions about content leads to improved retention and understanding of the material.

With that in mind, a lesson has a Retake option.

Re-takes

Allowing a student to re take a lesson is the default lesson setting under grade options. Each attempt at a lesson is normally recorded and the student can see a record of their performance by viewing their activity page. The teacher when creating a lesson has the option of showing the "final" grade as either the mean of all the attempts or the best (maximum score) of their attempts. This "final" grade is the one shown on the Grades page and the "Lessons" page. By default the mean of the grades is used.

In some learning environments, the teacher may not wish the students to have more than one attempt at a lesson. A particular lesson may be being used in an exam-like situation. Here the Lesson parameter for re-take is set to "No. Once completed the lesson will then not allow students to re-take the lesson. If, however, the lesson is not completed in one "sitting", students are still allowed to restart the lesson at the beginning or at the point where they left off.
As mentioned earlier a lesson can be used as a formative assignment, imparting some knowledge while at the same time making some demands on the students. It seems natural that students should be allowed to re-visit lessons and because they are given a grade many will want to achieve a good grade. This promotes re-takes.

Remember that even if a student has achieved the maximum possible grade in a lesson, allowing them to revisit the lesson to explore the various "wrong" paths in the lesson, may provide the student, you and your class additional insights.

Teacher review of students answers

The teacher has several options to review students answers in a lesson. The report tab provides both an overview of each student's attempt of a lesson, and a detailed summary of the class's answers to each question. It is also possible to see the same report via gradebook in the course administration block.

This brief overview should help in your understanding of the MySafe:LA Education Center's course delivery mechanism. Naturally, the only way to get totally familiar with the process is to use it - and we encourage educators to register with MySafe:LA, so they may be granted access to the Education Center.