Add a Lesson Activity to a CLE Course

The Lesson activity in the CLE allows instructors to transform course content into an interactive experience for students. The lesson activity "branches" from one page to another, depending on how students interact with the content. Lesson pages can consist of text, various types of media, or quiz type questions that students must respond to in order to continue with the activity.

A lesson page generally requires students to make some sort of choice once they have read the content or answered the questions. The students' choice determines which page they are shown next in the sequence. Lessons can be simple and linear, or they can be more complex and have various configurations available.

Use a lesson to: 

• Present content in a variety of ways to suit student preferences. For example, you might allow students to choose if they would like to watch a lecture video or read the transcript instead.
• Create a scenario or simulation that allows the student to practice decision-making skills or to apply principles to solve a problem.
• Use the branching capabilities to provide remediation when a student answers a question incorrectly.

Instructors should carefully plan any lesson(s) in advance before adding it to the CLE as a lesson activity.

Recommended Lesson Workflow

Plan and Add a Lesson Configure Settings Add Content

Plan Lesson Content

• Gather any text or media resources that will be incorporated into the lesson, including any supplemental information.
• Develop the lesson content and write any text or questions (multiple choice, matching, true/false, etc) and relevant feedback
• Design how the lesson should flow - where will certain sections branch to another?
• Determine how the lesson will be scored, if at all. *

*Note: Lessons may be set up as graded or non-graded activities. This article will not cover grading lesson activities. For information about grading lessons, please review Moodle Docs.

Example lesson content:

Page Title	Page Type	Information and/or Question	Answer Choices	Feedback	Jump To
Lesson Overview	Content	In this lesson you will: Recognize the most common symptoms of COVID-19 Identify the most effective ways to slow the spread of COVID-19 Let's start with recognizing the most common symptoms of COVID-19:			COVID 19 Symptoms: Next Page

Click here to download the entire lesson plan as a Microsoft Word Document.

Add a Lesson

1. Open the CLE (cle.ucsf.edu), and go to the course that you would like to add the lesson activity.
2. In the CLE course, click the Turn editing on button and then navigate to the course section where you would like the lesson to be added.
3.  Click Add an activity or resource in the Section/Topic where you want the lesson to be.

4. In the activity chooser, click Lesson from the list of activity tab. The Adding a new lesson  page will open.

5. Configure lesson settings (view next tab).
6. Click Save and display or Save and return to course .

Configure Settings

General

• Name: Enter a name for the Lesson activity (required).
• Description: Add a description (optional); click on the tick box underneath the description field to display the description underneath the activity title on the CLE course page. 

Appearance

• Progress bar: Enable this to show a bar at the bottom of the page that displays approximately how much of the lesson the student has completed.
• Display menu: Enable this to allow students to navigate through the pages in the lesson.
• Linked media: Upload any relevant media here - a link entitled "click here to view" this will appear in a block called "Linked Media" to the right of the lesson. Images and videos will display in a pop-up window, other file types will be downloaded to the local 'downloads' folder.
• Display ongoing score: If enabled, students see their score as they work through the lesson. It won't display for teachers previewing the activity.
• Minimum grade to display menu: Select a grade (percentage) to enable this setting - students must complete the lesson once and obtain the set grade before they can see all the different pages upon review 
• Slideshow: This setting enables a pre-set height and width for the content; we recommend leaving this setting to as No.
• Maximum number of answers: only affects what the teacher sees; use it to specify the maximum number of answer options that can be used in a lesson. For example, if you are only using True/False questions, you can set this to 2.
• Use default feedback: Select whether you want to Use default feedback, i.e. "That's the correct answer/That's the wrong answer", for any questions asked.
• Link to next activity: Choose this to give students a link to another activity when they reach the end of the lesson.

Availability

• Available from: Enable this to choose a date when this activity will be available 
• Deadline: Enable this to choose a date when this activity will no longer be available
• Time limit: Enable this to limit the amount of time students can interact with the lesson
• Password protected lesson: Enable this to make this lesson available only by entering a password

Flow Control

• Allow student review: Enable this to allow students to go back through the lesson before exiting.
• Provide option to try a question again: Enable this to allow students who answer a question incorrectly the option to try the question again.
• Maximum number of attempts: This setting sets the maximum number of attempts for any question in the lesson (and can be set to unlimited). 
• Action after correct answer:
  • Normal: follow lesson path
  • Show an unseen page: pages are shown in random order with no page shown twice
  • Show an unanswered page: pages are shown in a random order, with pages containing unanswered questions shown again
• Number of pages to show: This setting specifies the number of pages shown in a lesson. It is only applicable if normal was not selected for Action after correct answer in the previous setting.  If this is set to 0,  all pages are shown.

Grade

• Grade: Select the grading method from the following options:
  • None (default)
  • Scale: Choose from a variety of options in the dropdown list
  • Point: Assign a value to the lesson with a maximum of 100. 
• Grade category: If a category has been set up in the gradebook, it will appear here as an option for this lesson in the gradebook. If not, leave this as uncategorized. 
• Grade to pass: This sets the minimum passing grade and affects activity and course completion.
• Practice lesson: If this is enabled, this lesson will not appear in the gradebook.
• Custom scoring: If set to Yes, each answer may be given a numerical point value (positive or negative). 
• Minimum number of questions: If the lesson contains one or more content pages, the minimum number of questions should be set to zero. If your lesson is built as a pool of questions with no content pages, this setting specifies the minimum number of questions that will be used to calculate a grade for the activity. 
• Re-takes allowed: Enable this to allow students to complete the lesson more than once

Common module settings, Restrict access, Activity completion, Tags - these settings apply to every activity in the CLE, configure these as needed. 

Click Save and display or Save and return to course

Add Lesson Content

Disclaimer: There are multiple ways to create a lesson activity, but this guide is for typical use of creating a linear lesson with content pages and question pages serving as knowledge checks. 

Now that the lesson activity has been added and configured, the lesson content can be populated. You should see a screen like the one below, with a question prompt of What would you like to do first?

In this example, we will create a simple linear lesson with the following components:

Notice that in the above flowchart, learners must revisit a content page if they answer the related question incorrectly.

Step 1: Add Content Page 1 - this will be the lesson introduction

1. From the "What would you like to do?" page, click Add a content page
2. Page title: Enter the page title here - "Lesson Overview"
3. Page contents: These pages can display text, media, or both. Type the text in the above image.
4. Content 1 description: The words in this field will appear to the student as a button. Upon clicking the button, student will be navigated to the page set up in the jump (see next bullet point). Type "Continue" here. 
5. Content 1 jump: "Jump" refers to which lesson page the button will lead the learner. The choices in the dropdown list will include options such as "Next page" or "End of lesson" along with any existing pages in the Lesson. Choose Next page.
6. Click Save page to complete the introduction content page.

Step 2: Add Content Page 2

1. Once you have added a first page, you will see a green banner confirming you have successfully added the content page. 
2. From this page, you have the option of adding a page before your existing page, or a page after your existing page, depending on which link you click. For our lesson, we will click on the Add a content page link to create a page after the existing page.
3. Add the same elements as the first content page, but this time there will be two content descriptions and jumps:
   • Page title: Symptoms of COVID-19
   • Page contents: Add the text from the lesson plan.
   • Content 1 Description: Back
   • Content 1 Jump: Previous Page
   • Content 2 Description: Continue
   • Content 2 Jump: Next Page
4. Click Save page to finish

Step 3: Add Question page 1

1. From here, add a question page After the new content page - click on the Add a question page here link:
   
2. From the dropdown list, select Multichoice then click Add a question page.
3. Each question page is similar in the sense that you must add the question text and the correct/incorrect responses and feedback - use the content from the Lesson Plan document to populate the text.
   • Be sure to choose the correct Jumps for each correct/incorrect response. Incorrect answers should send students to the previous page, so they have the opportunity to select the correct answer. Correct answers should send students to the next page.
4. Scroll down and click Save page

Step 4: Add Content page 3

Adding a new page should now be familiar. 

1. Click on the Add a content page below the question page that has just been added
2. Add the same elements as the second content page, including the content 1 and content 2 Descriptions and Jumps
   • Page title: How to Slow the Spread 
   • Page contents: Add the text from the lesson plan.
   • Content 1 Description: Back
   • Content 1 Jump: Previous Page
   • Content 2 Description: Continue
   • Content 2 Jump: Next Page
3. Click Save page to finish

Step 5: Add Question Page 2

1. From here, add a question page after the new content page - click on the Add a question page here link:
   
2. From the dropdown list, select True/false then click Add a question page.
3. Each question page is similar in the sense that you must add the question text and the correct/incorrect responses and feedback - use the content from the Lesson Plan document to populate the text.
   • Be sure to choose the correct Jumps for each correct/incorrect response. Incorrect answers should send students to the previous page, so they have the opportunity to select the correct answer. Correct answers should send students to the next page.
4. Scroll down and click Save page

Step 6: Preview Lesson

At this point, you have successfully created a lesson activity in the CLE! It is recommended to preview the activity to make sure it is functioning as intended. To do so:

• Click on Preview tab
  • If this is the first time you are previewing the lesson, you will see the first page of the lesson
  • If this is the second+ time you are previewing the lesson, you will be prompted to select whether to resume the previous preview or to start a new preview: choose yes to resume your preview or choose no to start from the first page of the lesson
• Click through the lesson prompts as they come up. Test each button to make sure they jump to the correct locations.
• To see a full lesson preview, view the video below: