The lesson activity in Moodle - to use or not to use
May 4
posted by Mark Christie in
Authoring Tools, Adobe Connect, PowerPoint, Presenter, Agile Learning, Moodle, eLearning
| 0 Comments
A good friend of mine recently had problems with the Lesson Activity block in Moodle. I hadn't used it before and reviewed content from Moodle.org and even dialled a friend (our partners from NetSpot who manage our Moodle installation).
http://70.86.170.226/en/Adding/editing_a_lesson (information on the Lesson Activity)
I was excited by the prospect of being able to import PowerPoint slides as we can with other authoring tools like Adobe Presenter, Camtasia and Adobe Captivate.
Alas... disappointment.
Within our eLearning environment I recommend that it is not used for importing Powerpoint slides because generally it fails to import the slides from PowerPoint.
Additionally there is a requirement to first export the slides as a web page, zip up the folder that has the produced web page slides in them and then attempt to upload the zip file hoping that Microssoft's rendering of the pages into html matches what the module can translate. This requires simplifying the slides in some cases.
I think that for folks not using PowerPoint as a preliminary authoring tool or do not have access to more comprehensive authoring tools with quiz capabilities like those mentioned above, that the Lesson Activity can become a part of the eLearning arsenal. The ability to create branched lessons in a similar way to LAMS and include quizzes means that authors can operate completely within Moodle to create a bracnched, quizzed and scored sequence.
YouTube provides some great videos on using the activity block. I am sure that some people will swear by this block and I think it has uses, but maybe not for us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0ewuwDa_O0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8eO7axqxr4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR_hrLWtkRE
Our situation may be different to other education entities so I describe it briefly here.
We are fortunate as we have a variety of authoring tools that our teachers can use to create and and enhance their online lessons. The use of these tools mean that they can create the basic content in PowerPoint, using PowerPoint as a storyboard tool, sharing the file with the world (if required) for feedback as most folks can easily read a powerPoint deck. The add-on tools can supplement the content presentation with quizzes and conversion to a packaged streamed solution which as a finished product can be contributed to Moodle as a SCORM orbject or even uploaded directly into Adobe Connect, our synchronous learning environment.
Our teachers create content with support from a dedicated team and they are working towards authoring independence which means that the tools need to be available to all at a base level (PowerPoint) and easy to use at the next level (Captivate/Presenter/Camtasia).
By reducing the conversion steps required to make the content "playable" in the LMS (Learning Management System) or the SLE (Synchronous Learning Environment) we are closing the development time gap between the SME/Author/Student.
