Simple lesson

Activities ::: mod_simplelesson
Maintained by Richard JonesRichard Jones
Simple Lesson has features in common with Book, Lesson and Quiz. It has been designed as a formative assessment tool. For summative assessment Quiz and Lesson have more features such as timing and access restrictions.
Latest release:
183 sites
43 downloads
32 fans
Current versions available: 4

Simple lesson Version 2 for Moodle 4 (only) features:

  • Supports adding questions from the question bank
  • Behaviours adaptive, immediate and deferred feedback supported
  • Essay questions supported (manual grading required)
  • Easy to add and then automatically sequence pages
  • Consists of multimedia pages with simple hyperlinked navigation
  • Summary lesson attempt reports for students and teacher's
  • Manual marking of essay questions, updates to the gradebook.
  • Implements GDPR privacy requests for reporting and deletion of user data
  • Designed for Moodle 4.
Includes friendly page management interface for updating the lesson, updating questions on pages and moving pages.

Potential privacy issues

User answers and attempts are stored by this module. They can be cleaned by admins, either using Moodle's privacy features or by administrators and teachers via the Attempts Management console.

Screenshots

Screenshot #0
Screenshot #1
Screenshot #2

Contributors

Richard Jones
Richard Jones (Lead maintainer)
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  • Richard Jones
    Mon, 23 Mar 2020, 4:33 AM
    Hi John

    Could you please check and let me know what settings you have for Simple Lesson. If you have Do not allow incomplete with an adaptive strategy for example, the navigation won't appear until the question is correctly answered. If you uncheck that box then the navigation *should* always appear.
  • John Green
    Mon, 23 Mar 2020, 7:32 AM
    Yes, this is it! It works perfectly! Thank you very much, Richard.
  • Laura DiFiore
    Sat, 10 July 2021, 8:29 AM
    Using this in Moodle 3.9, and I absolutely freakin' LOVE this mod. I especially love the auto-sequence pages function, that is simply amazing! Thank you so much for this mod!
  • Richard Jones
    Sat, 10 July 2021, 11:28 AM
    You are most welcome. Thank you for your feedback and encouragement.
  • Yezi Yang
    Thu, 12 Aug 2021, 4:58 PM
    Hi, I am using the Moodle 3.11. When I click to add a question, I cannot see the box to select a question. I do not know whether other users also have this problem. Could you fix this problem, please?
  • Richard Jones
    Sat, 14 Aug 2021, 1:38 PM
    Hi Yezi, did you select a category in the plugin settings and does that category have questions in it? Then did you add questions to the plugin and finally did you allocate the question to a specific page using the manage questions screen. Finally are you in preview mode (which doesn' t show any questions). Also consider downloading the documentation from the link above under Useful links. Thank you for trying the plugin.
  • Richard Jones
    Tue, 17 Aug 2021, 6:14 PM
    I checked the plugin with Moodle 3.11 and it is working as expected.
  • Andy Gokce
    Mon, 20 Sept 2021, 3:44 AM
    Hi, it doesn't let me add questions from the question bank. The page comes blank with only the option to save changes.
  • Richard Jones
    Mon, 20 Sept 2021, 9:23 AM
    Hi Andy

    Did you select a question bank with questions in it under settings? Then did you go to the manage questions screen? If so which page is blank? Also note that questions will not appear in preview mode.
  • Susan Hanisch
    Wed, 16 Aug 2023, 3:19 PM
    I found this plugin after looking for alternatives to the core lesson mod, which does not allow the saving and viewing of previous attempts by users (see this thread https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-19948), nor the downloading of attempts. This plugin seems to allow downloading of attempts, but still does not seem to allow students reviewing their previous attempts (other than right after doing the lesson, but I want a way for students to see their attempts ANYTIME when they come back and not just once right after doing it). The "manage attempts" permission is for managing all attempts not just ones own, so that is not suitable for students. Previous answers to quiz questions are also not shown/saved (unlike in quizzes), i.e. you start from 0 when you attempt a lesson again. Am I missing something in settings regarding these issues?
    A few other issues I found: the deleting of attempts seems to not work. The "manage attempts" link takes you out of the activity context which seems annoying.
  • Richard Jones
    Thu, 17 Aug 2023, 9:02 AM
    Hi Susan

    Thank you for your comments, I don't think you are missing anything in settings. You don't say which version of the plugin you are using or which version of Moodle. You are correct, only the teacher can access the student attempt reports. You could allow students to do this using the permissions but then they could access every report so probably not what you want. As a workaround, students could copy their review directly from the screen immediately after the attempt if you allow student review in the settings. I can probably fix this up for you if you are using the latest version for Moodle 4.

    In respect of the quiz answers, adding this feature would require considerable work but I'm not ruling it out just yet, I will take a look. In the meantime if you use an adaptive mode, students can attempt a question until they get it right. Would this help?
  • Susan Hanisch
    Thu, 17 Aug 2023, 1:41 PM
    Hi Richard,

    thanks for your quick response! I am using Moodle 4.1 and latest version v2.00.4 of the plugin. I am trying to avoid the situation where students have to manually copy their attempts into some other document - and to depend on the fact that they only have one chance to do this and everything is gone with one click! This seems incredibly clunky and a frustrating user experience, especially since I have many essay questions. I would think that it should be easy to have students access their previous attempts also when they come back to the activity later (same problem I have with the core lesson module).

    There is still the issue that I can't delete previous attempts (and then can't change any grading settings). And that the "manage attempts" link takes you out of the activity context. Maybe these could be fixed easily?

    Other issues I also just found: When the student starts the lesson by clicking "Next page", it shows the index (which I like), but the embedded questions are not shown on pages, it only says "There is a question on this page". When the student starts the lesson by clicking "Attempt lesson", then the index is not shown but the embedded questions are there.
  • Richard Jones
    Thu, 17 Aug 2023, 5:37 PM
    Hi Susan,

    I think Manage Attempts must take you out of the activity context because it works across more than one Lesson - either that or I don't quite understand what you mean.

    The embedded questions not showing in preview mode and index showing in preview but not attempt mode are features not bugs. More features can always be added but when is Simple Lesson not simple any more? I'm trying to avoid the complexities of Lesson and Quiz.

    I think adding review for students is an excellent idea and I will try to find time to work on that. Unfortunately you hit me just before I'm taking a large slice of retirement time (6 weeks).

    The idea of having students re-attempt with their answer data preserved is an example of when the Quiz module should be used (each attempt builds on the last I think is what you have in mind). It might be applicable to a lesson that has ONLY essay type questions since the text of those are saved for manual grading anyway.

    When permitted in settings (allow incomplete question attempts) students can navigate back and forth between pages during an attempt and edit then re-save their answers.
  • Susan Hanisch
    Fri, 25 Aug 2023, 4:05 PM
    Hi Richard,

    thanks again for your quick response!
    If I understand correctly the button "Next page" is supposed to be preview mode. If that is the case I guess the button "Next page" is misleading and better might say "Preview lesson". I guess that can also be fixed with language customization for now, though i just realize that will change the string for the "Next page" buttons within the lesson as well and is therefore not really a solution.
    I still think the ability to see the index and navigate would be helpful for students in many cases (as in core lesson module).

    Still can't delete any attempts and therefore also can't change the grading settings. That must be a bug, or am I missing something?

    Happy retirement time!
  • Richard Jones
    Tue, 6 Feb 2024, 12:13 PM
    The Simple Lesson plugin is upgraded to allow student review of their attempts at a lesson. The teacher can enable this via settings, it is disallowed by default.
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