A Lesson allows you to create and organise E-Learning content to share with students in an online environment. You can share text, tables, images, video and HTML content. There is no passing percentage or score for Lessons; completion simply requires progressing through all the content provided. Automatically marked quiz questions can also be included to help reinforce students' learning.
You may choose to configure an assessment this way if:
- You have all of your learning content and resources developed and prepared prior to student enrolment
- You want to provide students with learning materials that they can access from home, work or anywhere with an internet connection
- You want to provide paperless content delivery
- You want to provide self-marking quiz questions for students to check their learning and understanding in a formative assessment format
If this methodology sounds similar to how you want to deliver your learning content, read on to see how this can be configured in aXcelerate.
Configuring the Assessment Type
Before creating a Lesson, you will first need to ensure that you have set up an Assessment Type. While Lessons are effectively a type of Assessment within aXcelerate, the system will identify that they are not true assessable tasks that count towards a learner’s overall grade/competency.
Assessments
- Click the Add New Assessment Type button
- Enter a Name for the Assessment Type, for example, “Lesson”, “E-Learning” or “Unit Content”
- (Optional) Enter a Description explaining the purpose of the Assessment Type
- Select the Base Type: Lesson
- Select the checkbox for Learners can repeat this Lesson if you want students to be able to repeat a Lesson without affecting any linked enrolments.
- Click Submit
When you have created your Assessment Type, it will appear in the Assessments Type List. You will see the Name of the Assessment Type, the Description (if you have entered information in this field) and the Base Type.
For more information on how to set up an Assessment Type, please refer to our Assessment Types help article.
Creating the Lesson
Now that you have created an Assessment Type, you can build the lesson!
It is a good idea to have the files and information you need ready before you start. This may include:
- Adding the document (you want students to download and complete) to the aXcelerate Resource Library, or to your organisation’s online filing system
- Adding any images you want to use as the thumbnail for this Assessment to the aXcelerate Images Library, or to your organisation’s online filing system
- Having the content pre-prepared so you can paste it in. You can also create the content in an external graphic design product to present the content in a visually consistent and attractive way, for example, Canva
- Bookmarking any videos you want to link or embed
Assessments
After clicking the + Add New Assessment button on the Assessment Management page in aXcelerate, you’ll need to go through and address several fields:
- Enter your Lesson Name. Try to follow a standard naming convention so that the Assessment Type is easy to locate and identify, for example, “Unit Code: Lesson Name”. Lesson names must not exceed 100 Characters.
- Select the Assessment Type from the drop-down list. You are looking for the name you created when you configured the Assessment Type; e.g. Lesson, E-Learning or Unit Content.
- (Optional) Drag and drop an image to be the thumbnail for this Assessment when viewed in the Learner Portal or add a URL for the thumbnail image. (Accepted formats: JPG, PNG, GIF)
- Enter an Overview. This is information about the lesson that is typically provided to students when they start a unit via the Learner Portal. For example, you could provide a short summary of the lesson content.
- (Optional) Enter additional student information if required. Student information is displayed to the student at the time you give them access to start the lesson. If you want the students to have access to the finer details of a lesson from a particular date (for example, 3 weeks after the Unit Start date) add them here.
- Click the Create Assessment button.
Creating the lesson will automatically take you through to the authoring area for that specific lesson.
Warning: You cannot change the Base Type of the Assessment Type after you have created it, so we recommend checking that you have selected the correct one before you click Submit.
Authoring the Lesson
After creating the start of your Lesson, you will subsequently need to author it in order to fill it with relevant items and content.
- Click the + Add New Question or Content button (see the Questions for Lesson section below for more information about your options).
- After creating each question, click on the Save Question button.
- When you have created all of your questions you can drag and drop them into a different order. You can also add Sections to organise the lesson content
- Click on the Save Changes button
- (Recommended) Click the Preview button to see what the lesson will look like for students. This is an important step because it allows you to identify any errors before you Publish the lesson. Note down any changes you need to make as you preview the task, and click Exit to return to the authoring area.
- When you have finished, click the Publish button.
- After authoring your Lesson you will need to map the task to the relevant Unit/s of Competency
For more information on question types, please refer to our Assessment Authoring help article, or view our Assessment Item Type Series SHOTs. For more information on how to map lessons as described in Step 7 above, please refer to our Assessment Mapping help article.
Tip: To add a hyperlink in your lesson to allow your students to download documents, first highlight the text that you want to link to, click the Link icon in the toolbar of any text editors, and then paste the URL into the URL field.
Tip: To add a video to your lesson you can paste the URL of the video, or embed the source code after clicking the Player icon.
Note: If you are pasting from another document, it is important that you paste the text without any hidden HTML formatting code.
To paste for Windows use Control+Shift+V.
To paste for Mac use Command+Shift+V.
Warning: The screenshots included in this Help Article are intended to demonstrate the process of authoring a lesson. The screenshots do not show real Unit of Competency content and are not intended to demonstrate training compliance.
Warning: If you use an online filing system external to aXcelerate, you will need to update links in the assessment task if you ever move the document.
Questions for a Lesson
You will have seven choices of item to select from the drop-down menu when authoring your lesson. Exactly which ones you need to use will depend on how the lesson needs to be delivered:
- Content
- Single Choice
- Multiple Choice
- Fill in the Blank
- Matching Lists
- Order Items
- Hot Spot
Although lessons are used to deliver learning rather than assess, these types also used in full Assessments, and can act as an excellent tool to reinforce learning and check for understanding.
For further information how these specific types function, please refer to our Assessment Authoring help article.
Note: Lessons only support automarking questions, and will not normally need an Assessor to individually mark submissions.
Enrolling Students in a Lesson
We recommend you use Learning Plans to deliver Lessons to your students, even for relatively simple courses. Learning Plans help structure content and assessments within a course to manage the student’s progression through the learning material and assessments. Even if the course structure is not complex, Learning Plans simplify the management and access for your courses, including ensuring any lesson mapping you’ve completed will automatically link activities to Units of Competency.
For more information about how to add a Lesson to a Learning Plan, please refer to our Learning Plans help article.
How Will Students View the Lesson?
After logging in to the Learner Portal the Student will see a Learning To Do button. Clicking on this button will take the students to any lessons that are open for them to complete. Alternatively, if the lesson is inside a Learning Plan, the student can also click into a relevant Module of the Plan and launch their lesson from there.
When the Student selects the lesson in the Learner Portal they will see the Overview information about the lesson. When the student selects the Begin Lesson button they will be redirected to the first item in the Lesson.
When the student reads or watches the content, the Next button will become available. When the students have answered a self-marking question, the Check button will become available.
When the student completes the final question of the lesson and clicks the Save button, the Complete Lesson button will then become available to complete the lesson.
The student can immediately review the lesson or questions again by clicking on the Lesson Results button.
The student can review the lesson or questions at another time by clicking on the Past Courses Tab, locating the relevant course and then clicking on the Learnings button, or they can use the Search bar to search for the Lesson