Outline of what’s needed in a Moodle lesson

Beginning

  1. A well-chosen graphic
  2. A welcome label, in which you introduce yourself.
  3. Introduce the course briefly and mention the goal of the course.
  4. A label with links to any information that they might need throughout the course. The beginning section is always viewable. (Lesson blocks are only viewable while students are studying that particular lesson.) This label needs to be quite unobtrusive so use a smaller font size, and put it all in one line separated by pipes. (|) You might want to include the following:
  5. Even though I've tried to delete it, Moodle puts a forum in this section anyway.

First lesson

  1. Give students an idea of what they are going to learn. (Called "forward planners"; students learn better if they have them.)
  2. Introduce the metaphor.
  3. Give students a way to introduce themselves. It's an icebreaker to get them to go on-line and discuss things.
  4. Give students an activity that addresses the main motivation for doing the unit. Give them a good reason for doing it.
  5. Then start the rest of the first lesson ...

Each lesson

Each lesson needs:

  1. A title.
    Say what the lesson is about in three or four words.
     
  2. A purpose statement
    Give the lesson a clear direction in one fairly short sentence. This introduces the lesson by giving students a forward planner. People learn better if they have an idea of what it's about and what's coming.
     
  3. A hook (optional)
    You might add a hook activity to raise interest (e.g. a pre-test for students to test themselves on what they already know about it.)
     
  4. Some kind of learning activity
    Give students activities that will help them learn. Activities should drive the content and give students a reason to learn something new. In other words, the activities get students to interact with the content. The Moodle approach is that students also interact with each other as much as possible. Interactivity may be a quiz, a discussion, a Wiki, etc. It needs to work examples or scenarios, and may include practical exercises. You'll normally need at least two kinds of learning activity for each point you teach.
     
    Learning activities are also formative assessments. In other words, they tell whether the student is on track to learn whatever you are teaching.
     
  5. Content
    Each point should be a simple statement of about six words, certainly no more than ten. Readers need to be able to quickly and easily grasp the main points of each section before looking at details.

    For each point in the lesson, you need to give students some kind of new information. It may be:
  6. Some way to get help
     
    This is usually a forum. For more sensitive topics, it might be better to give an email link.
     
  7. Instructions on what to do
     
    You can't assume that people will make sense of your links and thoughts. You need to give clear instructions on what to do. You can even include them in the links that students click on. For example, a reading might have a link that says: "Read this: About the community services industry"
     
    If students need to go through materials or exercises in a particular order, tell the students and number the steps. Otherwise, they might click on what they want. You can even hide particular materials or exercises within a lesson so that students have no option but to do it in the order you specify.
     
  8. Other
     
    You can also put up labels with notes and instructions to tutors, as long as you switch them off for students.

Note that some of these can overlap. For example:

Do's and don'ts for content

  1. Make the activity drive the reading; students won't read without a purpose. Flat text information might be necessary in higher courses, but it really only supports the activities. In other words, when you give people an activity, give them the written information that they must read to be able to do the activity.
  2. Give only information that students will need for the learning activities. If you don't ask students to use information in some way, it is useless and you can safely delete it. If it really is necessary, devise a learning activity that requires students to use it.
  3. Introduce all new information in simple terms first so it is easy to understand. Students need to get the main point the first time they see or read it. Later on, you might need to be more complex to be technically accurate, but students will do better if they have the gist of it first. If students start by being very confused and frustrated, tutors have to spend huge amounts of effort to help them understand it, and students are at much higher risk of dropping out.
  4. Give concrete examples. Online learning needs to be strongly grounded so that it doesn't look vague and theoretical.
  5. You need both content and interactivity. Beware the traps; you're not teaching anything if you include interactivity (even if it's good) without content. You're also not teaching anything if you include content (even if it's good) without interactivity.

Adding content

The kind of content you may wish to add will vary according to the topic, but may include:

Consider what else students will need to learn to reach the program goals and fit them into the outline. Consider, for example:

  1. Emotional intelligence
  2. Learning styles
  3. Public speaking skills
  4. Managing time and priorities
  5. Managing work-life balance
  6. Personal focus
  7. Where is my life or career going?
  8. Being a personal example
  9. Introduction to leadership
  10. Handling different people and temperaments

Note: Some activities don't gather content; they just reflect on content that already exists.