Lesson activity questions so limited for teaching languages

Lesson activity questions so limited for teaching languages

por Saeed Amiri -
Número de respuestas: 5
Hello


Recently I have started to make lessons for teaching English language. Using lesson activity, I have come to notice that I can only add a single question in a separate page after I have presented some material first as content pages. This is a huge limitation in itself for teaching English language. I mean, teaching languages often requires introducing new subjects (vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation ,etc)  by constantly engaging learners with short questions (especially in form of cloze tests) which can appear everywhere during a lesson and not necessarily at the end. You simply do not feed your students with some content first and test their understanding of it later at the end with a reading passage and questions of some type related to it.  

Of course, that's not the only problem. When, for instance, we speak of the short answer question type which is somehow similar to a cloze test - a format available in quizzes but not so in lesson activity - we have to provide a question of a certain length first with one "short answer" for the whole question. This can probably be good for such fields of study as Mathematics, Physics, and so on, but not for teaching languages, where you might provide a passage with several blanks which have to be filled up by students. And sometimes, you provide several of such questions in the same page which is again not possible to do so in a lesson activity question page (i.e. you can have one question per page).

I really would like to use Moodle for language teaching especially due to its various other powerful user-friendly capabilities, but I am somehow at my wit's end in coping with the above-mentioned problem. 

Please do let me know if I have overlooked a feature already available in Moodle which does the same thing in a lesson activity or if you have overcome this shortcoming one way or another. I would really appreciate it.

Regards

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En respuesta a Saeed Amiri

Re: Lesson activity questions so limited for teaching languages

por AL Rachels -
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Hi Saeed,

For the scenario you are describing, you could actually use a quiz to overcome the lesson shortcomings, if you set it up right.

  • Set the quiz up so that it does NOT shuffle the question order. It IS okay for multiple choice questions to shuffle their answers, though.
  • Place all of your newly introduced information in Descriptions. They are listed under OTHER when choosing a question type to add/create.
  • Follow each of the "Description" questions with as many regular quiz questions as you need, on a page of the quiz.
  • Start another page in your quiz with another "Description."
  • Follow with more questions.
  • Manually insert descriptions and questions in the order you need, with page breaks when needed.
  • Repeat until you have covered the "Lesson."

Like the Lesson module, doing it this way, everything except essay type questions will be automatically graded when the student submits for grading at the end of the quiz. Doing it this way has the advantage of letting you use ALL of the types of questions available for the quiz module, including addon questions types, such as the PoodLL one that is capable of audio or video or whiteboard, plus others such as gap- fill, drag and drop, etc. They are great  for teaching correct grammar and punctuation.

To me, the only downside I see when doing a "Lesson" this way, is you will have to put up with question numbers, which you would not normally see when using the Lesson activity, but students soon get used to them and ignore them.

Another point that may or may not apply to your situation, is that you can also set the quiz navigation up so that they cannot skip ahead or go back, if you so desire.

Using the quiz this way, you can actually set up a small question bank of various questions to go along with ONE "Description", then create a a quiz that has the "Description" first, then is followed by a few randomly selected questions to reinforce the material presented in the "Description." Each student gets a different experience each time they do the quiz.

HTH,

AL

Promedio de valuaciones (ratings):Useful (2)
En respuesta a AL Rachels

Re: Lesson activity questions so limited for teaching languages

por Saeed Amiri -

Hi AL

Thanks a lot for your detailed informative response. It seems I do not have any luck with lessons activity then, so I have to opt for the quiz solution and design my lessons the way you have kindly explained. The limitation is saddening, though, to me. I wonder if there is a chance we can witness more flexibility in respect with lesson question types in future Moodle versions. Do you know where we can request this?

Regards

Saeed


En respuesta a Saeed Amiri

Re: Lesson activity questions so limited for teaching languages

por Beatriz Rojo -

Dear Saeed,

in addition to what Al indicates, you can play with another awesome quiz-feature: the question behaviour. So you can, if you want it so, distinguish a "formal" test from a "learning" or "training" test.

I also teach foreign languages and tried with the lesson module but I got irritated with the limited question types.

Regards,

Beatriz.

Promedio de valuaciones (ratings):Useful (1)
En respuesta a Beatriz Rojo

Re: Lesson activity questions so limited for teaching languages

por Saeed Amiri -

Hi Beatriz

Thanks for replying. I haven't tried question behavior feature yet. It seems to be a useful feature. I'll try it. Thanks.

Regards

Saeed

En respuesta a Beatriz Rojo

Re: Lesson activity questions so limited for teaching languages

por Saeed Amiri -

Hi Beatriz

Do you mean the the question behavior option while we are making a quiz? If so, I have only "Shuffle within questions", "How questions behave" and "Each attempt builds on the last" which none seem to be related to what you explained as "formal," "learning" or "training" tests. Could you please explain more about the feature you meant?

Regards

Saeed