Evolving as a digital teacher: Tools of the trade (Part 4)

Use Lesson Activity together with audio, short video and quiz.

A tutorial I created initially for colleagues in the Information Systems department, DWU but I would like to share it here on my blog as the 4th sequel to the Evolving as a digital teacher series. 

This tutorial is based on the use of Lesson Activity which is an activity tool in Moodle. 

Part 1 Lesson Plan.
Create a lesson plan based on the topic you are going to cover for that week.

Example: I want to cover a topic on VPN & IPsec concepts. This topic is part of a module that is already divided into three subtopics with clear objectives for each section. If you're using a text reference as a guide you may want to follow the text layout for each chapter.

Here are the key objectives for each section of the topic.

• Lesson 8.1 VPN Technology -  describe benefits of VPN technology.
• Lesson 8.2 Types of VPNs - describe different types of VPNs.
• Lesson 8.3 IPsec - explain how the IPsec framework is used to secure network traffic.

What I usually do is to identify what technique I want to use to cover each section and what tool will help me achieve that.

• Lesson 8.1 - Use Moodle's lesson activity to cover it.
• Lesson 8.2 - Post discussion points on Moodle and get students to post replies and contribute to the discussion. Creating the task as a Q&A forum and setting the options to allow students to post feedback to a discussion question which can then be rated using a rubric.
• Lesson 8.3 - Invite students to a 25 minutes Zoom or Webex online meeting/discussion.

For this tutorial, I will focus on Lesson 8.1 and demonstrate step-by-step on how to setup the Lesson activity.

Part 2 Creating the Lesson 
Creating the lesson will include an audio intro, a 30 minute pre-recorded video lecture followed by check your understanding quiz at the end of the lesson. (This is how I approach my lesson activity, you may have your style or method. Use what method works for you.)

1. Adding the Lesson activity

Click on Add an activity or resource and select Lesson.

Add a Name and Description. I'll leave out the other important details about a lesson activity like the Grade and Flow Control until the end of this tutorial. I'll go ahead and create the lesson.

Click on Save and Display.

2. Now to the Lesson

Page 1 - Introduction

Click on Add a content page.

I decided to use audio instead of typing in the introductory statements. For this you have two options; you can either record straight from Moodle (red square) or record using an external tool (blue square) like Audacity, or Windows built-in recorder and save as an MP3 file and add the recording.

When done, you should at least put in a short description instructing the student to click and listen.

Scroll down and put in a short description for the button students should click to go to the next page of your lesson. You can add many buttons but less is better. Make sure to save page. 

 

At this stage, this is how your page should look like in Edit mode.

And this is how it will look if you click on Preview

Page 2 - Adding a video lecture into the lesson.

Click on Edit, under Actions select Add a content page.

Now for this section, I have pre-recorded a video which is just under 15 minutes using Camtasia. You don't necessarily have to use Camtasia. You can use other tools or even the built-in video recorder on Moodle.

If you click on Start recording you will notice Moodle pick up the built-in camera on your laptop as shown below.

The reason why I used Camtasia is because I wanted to record the PowerPoint presentation while talking (i.e. both presentation and audio). This is called 'screencasting'. There a tons of ways you can do this, please find tutorials on Youtube on how to do screencasting.

So this is the final recording. I decided to add annotations, transitions etc... Again it depends on what you want to achieve but less is better. (Sometimes I just put up the raw recorded video lecture as it is). When you add background sound and more effects etc, you end up with a larger file.

My aim here is to keep the file size below 100MB for direct Moodle upload. It is also important to save the file as a video (.mp4) file which can be uploaded to Moodle in Page 2 of the lesson.

Go to Share, Local File, choose from the drop-down menu MP4 only (up to 720p). I recommend this as the dimensions because it fits any desktop or mobile device and file size is greatly compressed without compromising the quality.

Once done, add a little description before you upload your video.

You can then scroll down and add another content. I put a quiz at the end of the video lecture to get them engaged. This also helps them check their understanding of material covered in the video lecture.

So in 'Preview' this is how your lesson should look like.

Page 3 - Add some more questions

The last part is entirely up to you on how you can get students engaged. You can add more questions.

For the final lesson I put in 5 multiple choice questions as Check Your Understanding (CYU) questions. You can see below the final lesson activity in Edit mode.

Additional options - Flow control and Grade

I set the Flow Control settings as shown below.

Since students won't be attending F2F classes, attempting the lesson activity online can be a way of assessing their participation in the course that is why I set it as a grade item. The choice is yours.

Finally, the Reports tab will show you who has attempted the lesson and completed it as shown below.

End of Tutorial