Moodle in English: Lesson Module - First release

Please find attached a module which is a cross between a resource and a quiz. Basically it allows the teacher to create and manage a set of linked "Pages". Each page can end with a question. The student chooses one answer from a set of answers and either goes forward, backward or stays in the same place in the lesson. On completing the lesson the student is given a grade.

The module is not a replacement for the quiz module. It's for getting across a small "body of knowledge" in an interesting way. It is basically a content module. The actual text is stored in the database and it gets run through the format_text filter before being displayed.

The module uses the HTML editor to allow the teacher to develop "rich" content. It's hopefully, fairly flexible in terms of lesson plans, but can be used in a very simple linear way by default.

I think it fills a gap in Moodle's resources - but I may be wrong mixed

To install please copy the attached zip file to the Moodle directory, unzip and login as Admin and go to the Admin page to get the db tables set up. There's a number of help files. It does require a recent version of Moodle.

le040214.zip

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Herbert Keijers - Sunday, 15 February 2004, 5:13 AM

Hi Ray,
tried lesson but was unable to build some tables. Got following error :
---------------
(mysql): CREATE TABLE `mdl_lesson_answers` ( `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment, `lessonid` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0', `pageid` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0', `jumpto` int(11) signed NOT NULL default '0', `timecreated` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0', `timemodified` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0', `answer` text NOT NULL default '', `response` text NOT NULL default '', PRIMARY KEY (`id`)) COMMENT='Defines lesson_answers'   1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'signed NOT NULL default '0', `timecreated` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0' at line 1

         adodb_mysql._execute(CREATE TABLE `mdl_lesson_answers` ( `id` int(10) unsigned NOT N..., false) % line 778, file: adodb.inc.php
      adodb_mysql.execute(CREATE TABLE `mdl_lesson_answers` ( `id` int(10) unsigned NOT N...) % line   16, file: datalib.php
   execute_sql(CREATE TABLE `mdl_lesson_answers` ( `id` int(10) unsigned NOT N...) % line   71, file: datalib.php
modify_database(/usr/local/www/data-dist/moodle/mod/lesson/db/mysql.sql) % line 299, file: index.php

Fout
----------------
I'm on the latest CVS

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Martin Dougiamas - Sunday, 15 February 2004, 10:50 AM

There is a typo with "signed" ... it can just be removed.

Ray, great idea!

You have full write privs to /contrib ... I've popped it in there for you and will put it on the download page after 1.2.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Herbert Keijers - Sunday, 15 February 2004, 7:36 PM

Should have seen it myself ...
Works now

Thanks !

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ger Tielemans - Sunday, 15 February 2004, 6:01 AM

Nice!

You even can create the TITANIC example with this tool.(http://www.inform-fiction.org/)

You can create all kind of decision-trees with this tool.

(hopefully Martin comes up with a multimedia plugin-field to make it complete)

I am wondering more and more... If we want soc. constr..

Why not open several of these modules for student use?
(...content filtering like now happens with the forum content)

let them include a resource (with comment)
open this lesson also for students so they can create decision-trees for homework
let them create a questionnairre (already possible?)
let them create a poll
let them create a quizz
let them fill a shelf with resources
let them create a glossary (already possible)

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Hans de Zwart - Sunday, 15 February 2004, 7:23 AM

The easiest way of making these things available to students is by making them teachers of a course. This is something that I regularly do.
To me that works fine, you just have to make sure that they cannot log in as other students, because they could then be up to some mischief

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ger Tielemans - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 4:05 PM

No, I want an environment where teachers can use teacher-tools for Monitoring and Coaching separated from other-student-eyes.

...and students can use - on a task per task base - the tools that are opened for students. (Which can also be a dialogue with another student, a journal with a younger student etc..) BUT ALWAYS WITH A SUPERVISING TEACHER WHO STAYS RESPONSIBLE IN NAME OF THE INSTITUTE.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Sean Keogh - Sunday, 15 February 2004, 9:05 PM

Could be very useful for some things here.

Oxford Beardie

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ray Kingdon - Sunday, 15 February 2004, 11:35 PM

Thanks Guys, and thanks for debugging my SQL tables blush

I've create a Lesson on the module (if I couldn't do that, the module would be a non-starter). It's the attached zip. It's a backup which contains just one instance of the Lesson module. It should add a lesson in Week/Topic 1. There's nothing else (no users...) in the backup. Simply copy the attached file to a course's backup directory and restore it. I think it should work (once you've installed the Lesson module, of course wink

)

demo-lesson.zip

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Tom Murdock - Sunday, 15 February 2004, 11:52 PM

great module, great demo lesson.

Thanks, Ray!

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by W Page - Monday, 16 February 2004, 1:06 AM

Hi Ray!

Thanks for the mod.

I really appreaciate the demo course on the "Lessons Module". It also made me learn how to essentially "install" a course since I had never used the backup and restore utility before.

Although you provided instructions in the help files for the activity, the demo lesson really locked in the procedure for me. I saw your post just before I was about to post a request to see the Lesson activity in action.

Thanks again,

WP1

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Herbert Keijers - Monday, 16 February 2004, 1:24 AM

Nice example Ray,
you even get additional info on your browser

, see red arrow in picture.
Thanks for the lesson mod

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Art Lader - Monday, 16 February 2004, 2:31 AM

Have you guys seen any glitches or bugs?

-- Art Lader

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Art Lader - Monday, 16 February 2004, 7:05 PM

Okay, Martin added it to our installation. (Oh, the joys of being hosted at Moodle.com!) It works great.

Thank you so much, Ray. You can't tell, but I am doing the Chicken Dance in your honor.

-- Art Lader

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ray Kingdon - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 12:40 AM

Yes, I was having trouble getting the HTML editor is play. The problem was I was running with $CFG->debug enabled and a couple of the HTML editor files were throwing up undefined variables. Not sure they would do that on a clean install or whether my development system is a bit out of skew. May be worth looking into in the fullest of time

.

Anyway I think Martin's stripped those debug lines and the HTML editor fine so long as I switch $CFG->debug off.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ger Tielemans - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 4:07 PM

If you switch HTML off you get this message, I think that makes reason..

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Dale Jones - Thursday, 19 February 2004, 10:05 AM

Nope, I've got HTML editor switched on and I still get
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: can_use_html_editor() in /moodle/mod/lesson/view.php on line 41

Dale

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Martin Dougiamas - Monday, 16 February 2004, 1:48 PM

Great job, Ray! Simple and impressive!

I've installed it here, and also installed the demo lesson in this course so people can try it out!

Finally, I've now moved this module into the main CVS tree for wider testing, so if anyone here has it installed among their CVS installation, you should remove these before your next update:

lang/en/lesson.php (file)
lang/en/help/lesson (directory)
mod/lesson (directory)

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by W Page - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 2:14 AM

Hi Martin!

Thanks for the "demo" install of the "Lesson" mod. How can I get the same "icon" to display for the "Lesson" mod that you have on the demo site.

Also, I am really confused about this CVS thing. It seems like it is a lot of work to get files from there but you and others refer to it as if it was an easy process. Is there an article or somewhere I can look so I can really understand how it can use it to its full potential. (something not to complicated and maybe with some examples).

WP1

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Tom Murdock - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 2:46 AM

W,
I think you've already seen this guide, but I can speak in a very non-technical way about CVS. As a rule, I've tried to never (hardly ever) grab one or two things from CVS because in software like Moodle, when the developers add one thing they usually need to change another.

If I do need to grab one thing or other (like I've heard that the Lessons module has been updated), I go into the lesson folder (if it was originally established by CVS) and type two things at the command line:

export CVS_RSH=ssh
cvs update -dP

Bam, bingo, everything in that folder is updated and every folder nested within that folder is updated.

Likewise, when I want the full shebang of an update, I go to the main moodle folder and type exactly the same command.

Voila, it updates every file and nested folder within the main folder.

For this reason, I think many find it really easy to use. But using CVS for chunks here and there gets dangerous. For example, if you update your lesson folder as I've done above, you have not updated your language files for that module. You then have to go the lang/whatever folder and type the two commands again.

Presto, chango! You'll have the language files. But I think if you want to avoid having to remember stuff like that, full cvs updates make the best sense. Also recognize that the developers fix things in the main CVS, but we don't have complete access to the changes until sourceforge backs up the servers. Sometimes that can be frustrating, but on the whole, the system still seems worth it. Imagine if all writing projects could be this efficient and clear about revisions and changes!

If I'm telling you stuff you already know, please forgive me.

-Tom Bingbop boo Murdock

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by W Page - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 3:35 AM

Thanks Tome!

That CVS page looks scary to me. I have recently just installed a recent (Feb 14, 2004) version of MOODLE. The only mod on it is "Lessons". I will try to upgrade it using the CVS and what you said.

Guess one has to jump in the pool and learn to swim at some point.

WP1

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Tom Murdock - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 3:54 AM

Oh, you can do it!

So here is the trick. If you want to update with CVS, you need to begin with it (in a cvs installation each folder has a cvs file that acts as a kind of bookmark and log). Do you have a command prompt with unix or are you on a different platform? First you'll want to rename your existing Moodle folder something (moodle2, maybe).

Then (if your server has CVS) type in these two commands:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/moodle login

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/moodle co moodle

This will create a new moodle folder (full of goodness + the cvs bookmarks I mentioned above). Then you'll want to copy your config.php from moodle2 into the new Moodle folder.

Done. (Also make sure that you drag over any mod folders/lang files, or custom themes). Moodle can get confused if the database points to a theme it can't find.

From then on, do your updates with the 2 command procedure I talked about in the previous post...

-Tom

p.s. Once you're comfortable, you can erase the moodle2 folder...

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by W Page - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 7:19 AM

Hi!

OK I figured it out. I was able to determine that the "view.php" file inside the "lesson" directory which is inside the "mod" directory controlled the display of the icon in the activity block (moodle/mod/lesson/view.php) [I think]. I saw an image named "icon.gif" in the "view.php".

I just dropped into that directory the image Martin had for the "Lesson" mod (icon.gif) and the new icon was displayed on the site. The new "icon.gif" image just replaced the original "icon.gif". So the path was moodle/mod/lesson/icon.gif.

Is this the proper approach at this time to change the icon for an activity.

WP1

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Eloy Lafuente (stronk7) - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 7:24 AM

Hi Ray,

very impressed about this simple and powerful module. You are the MOODLE-MODULE-MAKER-MACHINE (MMMM)

Three comments about it:

- Non-editing teacher can edit pages. They shouldn't do it.
- A link to see attempts/grades (upper-right in teacher view) could be fine (similar to other modules).
- A system to avoid direct navigation to the last (or any arbitrary) page (http://moodle.org/mod/lesson/view.php?id=1549&action=navigation&pageid=9) in the example could help, too (or isn't it a problem to get it graded in a consistent way?)

Anyway a great addition,

Ciao

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ray Kingdon - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 9:30 AM

Hi Eloy, excellent points, thanks.

Non-editing teachers should now see the complete lesson but (hopefully) without any of the editing buttons or links. Can you check that I haven't got a non-editing teacher at hand
Yes, that will be there in some form but I really need to run the module in a real course to have some data to test things out. I also thought of having some analysis of the question responses a la the Quiz module's full(?) report. I think that would be helpful.
I've fixed that (to a degree). From the student view-point all the page changes are now done with POSTs rather than GETs (Apart from the very last jump back into the course). It looks a bit tidier too as before one page had a button, the next page had a link, all the pages have buttons now. It's still hackable, of course, but it's more than just fiddling with the URL. The next level would be to use cookies but that seems a bit excessive. (The module keeps page views and the total number of views could be shown for each student.) What do you think? [There is a minimum path length through a lesson, perhaps that should be used before giving a student a grade. Working it out might be tricky though, if not impossible? ]

The revisions are in CVS. Thanks again, Ray

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by W Page - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 11:23 AM

Hi!

If you are going to add an analysis piece please consider the following,

Some way to determine if students have to repeat attempts at ansering a question and how many times a certain number of students chose each answer first, second, third, etc....until the number of responses that were made available.
Some way to export the data to excel, quatro pro, or in cvs format with specific delimeters.
A way to graph results online

Also two additional requests/suggestions

Ability to upload a lesson
ability for an instructor/teacher/admin to printout a lesson so that those of us who need things in writing can printout the lesson and make corrections which can be done online.

This is a really nice module.

WP1

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ray Kingdon - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 7:42 PM

Hi WP1! Thanks for this.

Yes, question analysis is pretty standard stuff, there's two measures I think something like discrimination(?) and reliability. The first shows if a question have a good spread of responses, the second if the question reflects the general trend as seen in the students' overall grades.
Yes, if the code is already in the Quiz module
Probably not.
Uploading lessons is via the excellent backup/restore mechanism, that's already in place.
That's already there as well, just print the page that the teacher sees when they first go into the lesson. It shows all the lesson content, answers, responses and jumps.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ray Kingdon - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 7:30 PM

Eloy, with regard to your third point, I've now added a "sanity check" before giving the student a grade. Basically it chains through their page views seeing if the sequence is correct/allowable. If they've managed to do any naughty jumps (for example getting the end of the lesson from an impossible place) their attempt is thrown out and no grade is awarded. I think it's sufficiently watertight now and I don't have to work out the minimum path length through a linked list - phew wink

.

The addition is in CVS.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Eloy Lafuente (stronk7) - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 10:04 PM

That's lightspeed !! The "sanity check" sounds very well

One off-topic comment. One user in "Moodle en Español" course, post a message about one product (comercial, of course), called Quandary. He said that it has a lot of functionalities (I don't know it) and I post this as a reference for the future.

Anoher off-topic comment: Reading the page above, I found the word "Maze". Could it be more "spectacular" (no proper, but more descriptive) for your great module and its icon?

Ciao

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Martin Dougiamas - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 10:32 PM

With a big rat in it, maybe?

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Przemyslaw Stencel - Wednesday, 18 February 2004, 1:43 AM

Oh Martin, don't reject the maze idea just outright

Actually, Quandary is a very useful program, which can be used to create wonderful mazes (not of the rat type, but real problem-solving activities. Have a look at some examples:

The first three were designed by the creators of Quandary, the last one is an web-adapted version of a class activity from an EFL textbook. I use it on the intranet during my classes (all students have copies of the textbook, so I hope it's not against the copyright; I've published it on the internet for you to see, but will take it off in 1-2 days). Actually, the mazes can be really collaborative activities. When we have the business maze activity during my classes, students work in groups of 3-4 and go through the maze negotiating each decision in their groups. Afterwards they have to report to the whole class, reflecting on the decisions they've made. Of course in an online course the negotiating could be done via chat and the reporting and reflecting could be in a forum.

I believe the lessons module is not like a mindless rat race, it can be a powerful teaching tool (and a collaborative learning activity). It is a little like Quandary (the possibility of branching) and I believe if it evolved into something even closer to Quandary, it would actually be a good idea (although I realise this would involve quite a lot of work, especially adding assets and transactions)

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Lesson Module is not itself a maze

by Martin Dougiamas - Friday, 20 February 2004, 12:40 PM

Just found your post, Prem!

I'm not at all rejecting the Lesson module! In fact I think it's terrific and I absolutely love it! I've been installing it for people all over the place.

The rat reference was purely a joke referring to earlier discussions about mazes, not the lesson module, but I can see how my off-the-cuff joke could look that way even with the smiley - sorry for the confusion!

The Lesson module is a fantastic way to act some interactivity to resources, and the grading is a great motivator too. It's a very strong new tool in our toolbox. Yes, it can be like a maze but as you've mentioned it's an activity that can be used in many ways.

What would be a true maze in the sense that I originally mentioned this term would be a course constructed entirely of one Lesson after another, without using other Moodle tools like Forums etc, and without any interaction from the teacher or between students. In the same way, a course consisting of nothing but an enforced series of Resources and Quizzes would also be a maze with impoverished learning potential. Possibly the word I should be using is not so much a maze as a tunnel.

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Re: Lesson Module is not itself a maze

by Eloy Lafuente (stronk7) - Saturday, 21 February 2004, 8:39 PM

by Martin:
...
Just found your post, Prem!

I'm not at all rejecting the Lesson module! In fact I think it's terrific and I absolutely love it! I've been installing it for people all over the place.

Oh, that's the word. We can rename the "Lesson" to "Terrific", isn't it?

This is purely a joke too,

Ciao

PS: The "maze" alternative I wrote some posts above was only an "off-topic" comment. The word sounds more attractive for me (at least in Spanish), simply !!

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Re: Lesson Module is not itself a maze

by Ger Tielemans - Monday, 8 March 2004, 4:18 AM

..a course constructed entirely of one Lesson after another, without using other Moodle tools like Forums etc, and without any interaction from the teacher or between students..

I agree with you, formulating it that way, lesson can become poison for Soc.Constr:
It steels from students the experience to feel the control/responsibility of their own learning, allowing them to make mistakes, helping them to reflect on that and even learn more from that then from all the things they did well... That's what I fear the most when SCORM will rule: eating blue pills for single rats, in an educational LMS.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ger Tielemans - Friday, 20 February 2004, 3:44 AM

The maze is a very strong metaphor for how to construct better learning settings.
You can sacrifice students to real life, boy o boy, what a maze, or should I say a jungle...How they will learn, at least that handful of survivors..
If you construct a learning setting, you try to simplify the too complex situation of real life: doing it to much you end up with a one-way-alley: BORING
Do you a better job then the maze has small sideways, but they are to short to become a real learning experience: these are the programs that tell the student: "do this, now do that in 20 steps or so." Switching off the computer after this kind of courses is disappointing: the student can do nothing without the step by step cues from the computer..
Real learning settings are like good inviting mazes: you construct the main road through the maze, not too easy... Then you construct side-alleys by interviewing experts in the field and listening to their advices, you construct wrong-expert-choices: In the student perspective it seems common sense to choose that side-road, until it turns out to be a dead-alley: realizing that they say someting like: Eureka... You could call this good Moodling..

Decision trees ar good examples of this kind of mazes. after all these years of constucting AI programs, IBM trains now there human resource managers with a very rich decision-tree. Lessons - again a hit from the Modul Man Ray - could turn out to be a very rich training maze, disguised as a guided tour, a maze is so....CLEAN?

Interactiv Fiction (IF) programs like INFORM ( http://www.inform-fiction.org/ )with the build in language parsers are also promissing, but I still miss the webversion I can hang into Moodle

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Przemyslaw Stencel - Monday, 16 February 2004, 5:45 PM

Wonderful, Ray!

I've just started testing it - when moving a page, the teacher sees something like this:

Moving page: Page 2

$newfirstpageid: 1

$after: 1

and has to figure out what to do next. mixed

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ray Kingdon - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 12:48 AM

Thanks, yes, a couple of debugging messages. I've removed them now in CVS and it now redisplays the lesson in the new page order. I've also added a missing string [movepagehere]...

...although I'm so pleased with the code to move pages it should play a little song or something [dada?]. I think it works correctly under all circumstances.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Art Lader - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 3:45 AM

Well, I would LOVE it if a little TADA played at the successful completion of the lesson.

No, I am not kidding! I have many students who would enjoy that.

-- Art Lader

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Bernard Boucher - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 9:11 AM

Hi Ray,
great simple tool

I think it fills a gap in Moodle's resources - but I may be wrong

You are perfectly right. It does most of activity linking with some adaptative feedback as bonus big grin

All that in a elegant editable module.

Thanks for that great work,

Bernard

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Timothy Takemoto - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 6:14 PM

The lesson module is truly beautiful Ray,

I am hearing the sound of those sirens again....We have automated homework, now automated lessons! In any event I think that it is going to be really helpful. I hope to make some lessons to get students to revise, reinforce, and think and prepare before hand.

I think that this also goes a long way to answering calls for "long answer questions" since the lesson could, I think, also be used for comprehension questions.

Some questions/suggestions

1) Average (not best) grade? Is there going to be a way to set the grade to average? I think that I am going to get those people that press buttons at random in order to get the top grade.

2) Random Questions from a pool? I guess also that some of my students are going to ask their friends what the right answer is rather than doing the lesson. It would be nice therefore to have the possibility of randomised questions from a pool, but I respect that this is a long way off, or even not desirable? I think I would like the possibility since it seems to me that one might be saying more than one thing in a page and the answers are randomised.

3) HotPot Lessons (Thomas?) I still have not made my first hotpot quiz but if the this were to be integrated with that then I would have multiple mars bars.

4) Integration with Bernard's activity linking so at the end of the lesson comes the quiz.

In awe,

Tim

Timothy Takemoto

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ray Kingdon - Tuesday, 17 February 2004, 8:24 PM

Tim, thanks, yes, Moodle is begining to feel bigger than the sum of its parts approve

You can thwart the random buttons pushers to a degree by making the silly answers jump right back to the start of the lesson. That may get their attention. Yes, in the Exercise module there's the choice of best or average grades and I invariably use average grades (which irritates my students somewhat). The same option could be easily added to lessons.
Random questions are not easy. There's this link between pages and questions which does not lend itself to having a set of questions associated with a single page (a page can have a set of questions following it but the order of their appearence is pretty well set in concrete). You could, I think, have a "Shuffle" option which shows the pages of a lesson in a random order, that might be appropriate for certain types of lesson (but not by any means all). It would show all the pages of a lesson in a random order, each page appearing once. Answers would still be correct or wrong, a correct answer takes the student to a random (new) page, a wrong answer just shows the page again. Would that be useful?
Sorry, I've not followed the Hot Potato discussions, can you give me a clue/pointer?
I've got a feeling that activity linking is some sort of uber thing that is really best handled by some mechanism beyond the module level. In other words, to do it properly there's needs to be some super structure in place. And then we're really into the field of MLEs.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ralf Hilgenstock - Wednesday, 18 February 2004, 2:34 AM

Hi Ray,

great modul. I checked the help-files and missed some informations about formating answers. I think you have used the priniciples of the quiz-modul. Perhaps you can add the formatgift.html from the quiz-modul or must we used other rules for formatting text?

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ray Kingdon - Wednesday, 18 February 2004, 9:25 PM

Ralf, yes, the answers are simply entered into individual textareas/HTML editor windows when you add pages. The GIFT filter is used to import questions from text files. The lesson module has not reached that stage in development yet.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ger Tielemans - Friday, 20 February 2004, 4:21 AM

Shoudl be very interesting if you could import/export lessons like you now can do with the glossaries. Because the construction of a dedicated lesson is a huge of work, so sharing this construct would be very nice...

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ralf Hilgenstock - Friday, 20 February 2004, 4:55 PM

My primarly point is, that in the files the information where and how to add response are missing.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ray Kingdon - Saturday, 21 February 2004, 11:03 PM

Ralf, I think I understand your point. A response is defined in the Overview help file (that's the one you get from the teacher's view page). Not sure what else I can say about the response. When you add or edit a page the box where you add one is labeled Response. What more can I do?

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Timothy Takemoto - Wednesday, 18 February 2004, 6:20 AM

Dear Ray,

Thanks for responding.

1) I like your idea of how to thwart random button pushers. The no brain distractor can explain why it is taking the student back to first base. I will use that.

2) Shuffle would be useful for a limited subset of pages, such as a vocabularly practice in the middle of a lesson. But most if not all lessons would benefit from an introduction and conclusion. However...shuffle would be nice in any form.

3) Regarding Hotpot please see Thomas Robb's sterling work here
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=304

4) Yes...Linking may well be uber. What do you think Bernard?
I wonder if it is possible to imbed quizes inside lessons.

Tim

Timothy Takemoto

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Bernard Boucher - Wednesday, 18 February 2004, 9:48 AM

Hi Timothy and Ray,
I have some problem to answers #4 because I don't know what uber and MLE means sad

( don't forget I have a limited 200 words english vocabulary blush

)

But Ray is right saying that activity linking is not "moduleable" because it works at the heart of the modules not as a module.

Lessons are linkable with a little effort and usable as predecessor also. I will upgrade activity linking with 1.2 beta release and integrate lesson in it.

Your embed suggestion interest me. I will give it a try maybe this weekend. With that imbed or autoactivate, it should be possible to trigger, to activate automatically the next linked activity if desired ( should be an option, not always usefull )

That way those who wanted quiz with one or some questions per page have only to create many quizzes with the appropriate number of questions, link them, and the student will see a many pages quiz, each having the appropriate number of questions per page.

Also Mike phpESP-based Questionnaire module looks great. ( I will try linking it later )

Bye,

Bernard

p.s. Timothy do you know if it will be possible to test John features with his approbation?
Thanks

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Timothy Takemoto - Wednesday, 18 February 2004, 7:20 PM

Dear Ray,

Thinking about shuffling and taking the liberty of expressing my desire quite shamelessly:

I have for some time wanted an "evalu-practice" "flashcard" module with the functionality of Vtrain for instance, or any of these 200 plus flash card programs.

If occurs to me know that flashcard program functionality is is very similar to this wonderful lesson module except:

1) There is no logical order. The pages appear shuffled.

2) Instead of a correct answer allowing one to proceed in the logical order, a correct answer removes that page from the pack of shuffled pages, while an incorrect answer leaves that page in the randomly shuffled page pack (or perhaps at the back, at the end of the logical order if the shuffling only happens once.)

This flashcard format is claimed to be a good way of learning things (particularly vocabulary but not only vocabulary). Those things that one is not clear on appear again and again, but not immediately.

Pure greed! Please ignore.

It is quite important to me for another reason because on the 8th of March I am to visit a local Unviersity which has developed their own propietory quite of online language training tools including specifically a flashcard program for training in vocabularly. I am aprehensive that my university may decide to "invest" in that software.

Tim
Timothy Takemoto

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ray Kingdon - Wednesday, 18 February 2004, 9:09 PM

Tim, initially that sounds like a new module rather than an option to the Lesson module. Roughly the main differences would be

Each instance would have a description as well as a name, the description would be shown to the student at the beginning of a "session";
Correct "cards" are removed from the "pack";
A student is shown N cards (a parameter) in the session;
Their grade is number of correct answers/number of cards seen (N);
A counter telling the student how many cards they've seen and how many they've got corect would be nice.

Would a second session exclude cards seen in the first session or is that best given as a parameter?

I assume we're talking multiple answers with just one correct answer, but more than one correct answer would be easy to implement. Do answers have responses?

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Ray Lawrence - Thursday, 19 February 2004, 8:24 AM

I've just tried the sample lesson. Absolutely GREAT!

Best wishes

Ray

(no relation)

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Dale Jones - Thursday, 19 February 2004, 9:37 AM

What a great idea Ray - my hat's off to you!
I tried the demo lesson (wonderful) and downloaded the module from moodle .org. Needed to get the lang/en/lesson.php file from CVS which sorted things out a bit, but now I'm getting
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: can_use_html_editor() in /myrottenserver/moodle/mod/lesson/view.php on line 41
so I'm off to play with the CVS version of your module. It's what I've been thinking about for a while now; I was going to plan learning routes by putting links in the feedback in quizzes (it's been suggested somewhere else) but it looks like the lessons module performs the functions I need a lot better and easier.
Thanks Ray.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Dale Jones - Thursday, 19 February 2004, 9:58 AM

Nope, Im still getting that error. I uased the CVS versions of lesson.php and view.php on both Mozilla and IE, but no joy.

Can somebody please tell me what I'm doing wrong? I'm itching to try this module.

TIA
Dale

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Martin Dougiamas - Thursday, 19 February 2004, 3:36 PM

Dale, this module requires Moodle 1.2 (1.1.1 won't work)

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Dale Jones - Thursday, 19 February 2004, 6:55 PM

Thanks for the response Martin but this adds to my confusion...I'm using 1.2, version number 2003103100. Does that shed any light on the problem?

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Martin Dougiamas - Thursday, 19 February 2004, 7:52 PM

I suspect you have a mix of old and new files then, because the function can_use_html_editor() is definitely in the new lib/moodlelib.php file.

It might be worth replacing all the files with the latest again.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Zbigniew Fiedorowicz - Thursday, 19 February 2004, 8:23 PM

Version number 2003103100 (Oct. 2003!) is VERY old for a 1.2 dev. Development versions evolve very rapidly. You need something which isn't more than a few weeks old.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Martin Dougiamas - Thursday, 19 February 2004, 8:57 PM

Gosh you're right, Zig! I must be reading too fast! I read 2004013100!

Upgrade upgrade upgrade, man!

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Dale Jones - Saturday, 21 February 2004, 8:07 AM

OK chaps, I get the hint!

Sorry for being a stick-in-the-mud but me and that version were having a good time...

Thanks for your responses

Dale

Happy now, and off to upgrade

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Dale Jones - Tuesday, 24 February 2004, 10:43 AM

Ah, relief. Upgrading fixed it. Why didn't I do this before? blush

Thanks for the help.
Dale

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Dale Jones - Monday, 8 March 2004, 5:39 AM

Few things are as satisfying as the responses I get from engaged learners, speeding through a Lesson at their own pace. Sure, they needed some prompting to follow links to forums and quizzes, they needed me there to explain things in a different way, but most of all they WORKED AT THEIR OWN PACE and in a way they could learn. What's more , a couple of them have tried it again at home to improve their scores on the quizzes. These kids are 11/12 years old and are becoming ever-more motivated in ICT lessons.

Thanks, MOODLE! You're making my job even more worthwhile.

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Re: Lesson Module - First release

by Bryan Williams - Monday, 8 March 2004, 6:23 AM

Dale,

Would you mind if folks used this wonderful quote for Moodle promotional purposes? Makes the evangelists job a bit easier. Thanks!

Bryan

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