The Lesson module can create a series of pages which can be presented in a linear fashion, like a slide show, or in a non-linear, branching manner, or a combination of the two.  It can be graded, with questions, or ungraded and used simply as a resource. An ideal use of lessons is to deliver content such as text, audio, video files, etc. and then follow the content with graded questions. This implements the Practice Principle, which eLearning researcher Dr. Richard Mayer has shown greatly enhances student learning.

From the Course Menu:

1. Chose the desired section for the lesson, and Turn editing on.
2. Click the Add an activity tab to the right of the desired section and choose Lesson.
3. Give the lesson a title in the Name field, and adjust the settings as desired. For more information about the settings, see below.
4. When ready to create the lesson, click Save changes.
5. Now, you have the option of importing questions, importing a PowerPoint presentation, adding a Branch Table or adding a Question Page. For more information, click on the previous links.
6. When done, don't forget to save the changes!

Settings for lesson:

• Timed - This puts a time limit on the lesson. Students are shown a JavaScript counter and the time is recorded in the database. Due to the inconsistent nature of JavaScript, the timer does not evict a student from the lesson when the time is up, however a question answered after the time limit is not counted. The time in the database is checked each time a student submits a question.
• Time limit (minutes) - Type a number in minutes here for the time limit.
• Maximum number of answers/branches - This value determines the maximum number of answers the teacher can use. The default value is 4. If the lesson uses only, say, TRUE or FALSE questions throughout then it is sensible to set this value to 2. This parameter also sets the maximum number of Branches that can be used in a Branch Table. It is safe to change the value of this parameter in a lesson with existing content. In fact if you want to add a question with many choices or a long Branch table changing this parameter will be necessary. After the (unusual) question or BranchTable has been added this parameter can be reduced to a more "standard" value.
• Practice lesson - A practice lesson will not show up in the Gradebook.
• Custom scoring - This will allow you to put a numerical point value on each answer. Answers may have negative values or positive values. Imported questions will automatically be assigned 1 point for correct answers and 0 for incorrect, though you may change this after the import.
• Maximum grade - This value determines the maximum grade which can be awarded in the lesson. The range is 0 to 100%. This value can be changed at any time during the lesson. Any change has an immediate effect in the Grades page and on the grades shown to the students in various lists. If the grade is set to 0 the Lesson does not appear in any of the Grades pages.
• Student can re-take - This setting determines whether the students can take the lesson more than once or only once. The teacher may decide that the lesson contains material which the students ought to know thoroughly. In which case repeated viewing of the lesson should be allowed. If, however, the material is used more like an exam then the students should not be allowed to re-take the lesson. When the students are allowed to re-take the lesson, the grades shown in the Grades page are either their average grade over the re-takes or their best grade for the lesson. The next parameter determines which of these two grading alternatives is used. Note that the Question Analysis always uses the answers from the first tries of the lesson, subsequent re-takes by students are ignored. By default this option is Yes, meaning that students are allowed to re-take the lesson. It is expected that only in exceptional circumstances will this option be set to No.
• Handling of re-takes - When students are allowed to re-take the lesson, this option allows the teacher to show the grade for the lesson in, for example, the Grades page, as either the mean, this is average, of the grades over the first and subsequent tries or as the grade from the students' best tries. This option can be changed at any time.
• Display ongoing score - This will display the grade of the student as they work or if she/he doesn't finish the test
• Allow student review - This will let the student navigate back through the lesson to change their answers.
• Display review button - This will display a button after an incorrectly answered question, allowing a student to re-attempt it. It is not compatible with essay questions, so leave this off if you are using essay questions.
• Maximum number of attempts - This value determines the maximum number of attempts a Student has in answering any of the questions in the lesson. In the case of questions which do not provide the answer, for example Short Answer and Numerical questions, this value provides a necessary escape routine to the next page in the lesson.
• Action after correct answer - The usual action is to follow the jump as specified in the answer. In most cases this will probably show the Next Page of the lesson. The student is taken through the lesson in a logical way, beginning at the start and ending at the end. However, the lesson module can also be used as a type of Flash Card assignment. The student is shown some information (optional) and a question in basically a random order. There is no set beginning and no set end. Just a set of Cards shown one after another in no particular order. This option allows two very similar variants of Flash Card behaviour. The option "Show an unseen page" never shows the same page twice (even if the student did not answer the question associated with the Card/Page correctly). The other non-default option "Show an unanswered page" allows the student to see pages that may have appeared before but only if they answered the associated question wrongly. In either of these Flash Card-type lessons the teacher can decide to use either all the Cards/Pages in the lesson or just a (random) sub-set. This is done through the "Number of Pages (Cards) to show" parameter.
• Minimum number of questions - When a lesson contains one or more Branch Tables the teacher should normally set this parameter. Its value sets a lower limit on the number of questions seen when a grade is calculated. It does not force students to answer that many questions in the lesson. For more info click here.
• Number of pages (cards) to show - This parameter is only used in Flash Card type lessons. The default value is zero which means that all the Pages/Cards are shown in a lesson. Setting this parameter to a non-zero value shows that number of pages. After that number of Page/Cards have been shown the end of lesson is reached and the student is shown their grade.
• Slide Show - This enables the display of the lesson as a slide show, with a fixed width, height, and custom background color. A CSS based scroll bar will be displayed if the width or height of the slide is exceeded by the content of a page. Questions will 'break out' of the slide show mode, only pages (branch tables) will be shown in a slide by default. Buttons labeled with the lang default for "Next" and "Back" will be shown at the far right and left of the slide if that option is chosen on the page. Other buttons will be centered below the slide.
• Slide show width & height - Type a number for how many pixels wide or high the slides will be.
• Slide show background color - Type in a 6 letter code for the color of the slides.
• Display left menu - This will show a list of the pages (Branch Tables) in the lesson. Question pages, cluster pages, etc. will not be shown by default (you may choose to show question pages by checking that option on the question).
• Password protected lesson - This will not allow a student to access the lesson unless they type the password.
• Password - If you have set Password Protected Lesson to "Yes", type a password here.
• Tree view - This will show a list of the pages and questions in the lesson as links. Pages will be in blue and questions in red. This is handy for navigating lessons with many pages.
• Display high scores - A list of the high scores for the lesson will be shown. Students who get a high score can choose a custom name to list their score by. There is a 'badwords' filter which checks for naughty names.
• Number of high scores displayed: - Select yes before Saving the lesson, and the settings you have chosen for this lesson will be the default settings for the next time you create a lesson for this cours
• Use this lesson's settings as defaults - Select yes before Saving the lesson, and the settings you have chosen for this lesson will be the default settings for the next time you create a lesson for this course.