Activity Modules

A flashcard or flash card is a card that is used as a learning aid. One writes a question on a card and an answer overleaf. Flashcards can bear vocabulary, historical dates, formulas or any subject matter that can be learned via a question and answer format. Flashcards are widely used as a learning drill to aid memorization by way of spaced repetition.

A widely used method to efficiently use flashcards was proposed by the German science popularizer Sebastian Leitner in the 1970s is used in this flashcard-trainer. In his method, known as the Leitner system, flashcards are sorted into groups according to how well you know each one. This is how it works: you try to recall the solution written on a flashcard. If you succeed, you send the card to the next group. But if you fail, you send it back to the first group. Each succeeding group has a longer period of time before you are required to revisit the cards.

For example, suppose you have 3 groups called Group 1, Group 2 and Group 3. The cards in Group 1 are the ones that you often make mistakes with, and Group 3 contains the cards that you know very well. You might choose to study the Group 1 cards once a day, Group 2 every 3 days, and the Group 3 cards every 5 days. If you look at a Group 1 card and get the correct answer, you "promote" it to Group 2. A correct answer with a Group 2 card "promotes" that card to Group 3. If you make a mistake with a Group 2 or Group 3 card, it gets "demoted" to Group 1, which forces you to study that card more often.

The advantage of this method is that you can focus on the most difficult flashcards, which remain in the first few groups. The result is, ideally, a reduction in the amount of study time needed.

This activity can be the most important - it is here that most discussion takes place. Forums can be structured in different ways, and can include peer rating of each posting. The postings can be viewed in a variety for formats, and can include attachments. By subscribing to a forum, participants will receive copies of each new posting in their email. A teacher can impose subscription on everyone if they want to.

A choice activity is very simple - the teacher asks a question and specifies a choice of multiple responses. It can be useful as a quick poll to stimulate thinking about a topic; to allow the class to vote on a direction for the course; or to gather research consent.

A lesson delivers content in an interesting and flexible way. It consists of a number of pages. Each page normally ends with a question and a number of possible answers. Depending on the student's choice of answer they either progress to the next page or are taken back to a previous page. Navigation through the lesson can be straight forward or complex, depending largely on the structure of the material being presented.

A Mobile Learning Object ("MLO") is a special content created for the MLE (mobile phone application for Moodle), which can only be used on the mobile phone. A Mobile Learning Object is stored on the local phone, therefore you don't need a internet connection on the phone to use the Mobile Learning Object (otherwise you would have to pay for the download of the content each time you use it).

You can add a great varaiety of content to a Mobile Learning Object:

• formatted text with images, audio and video
• Interactive questions (are solved on the phone, without a server connection)
• Long text content (eBook-Mode)
• and more ...

A Mobile Learning Object is created with a graphical editor (called MLE-Editor). To use this editor you need Java installed on your computer (If you don't have Java please click here to get it for free). Please accept all security warnings (if one may appear) otherwise you won't be able to use all the features of the editor!

If a Mobile Learning Object is marked as an eBook it must contain only (formatted) text, images and links (everything else will be ignored on the phone). The great advantage of using the eBook-Mode is, that the parsing time (the time you need to store the object on the mobile phone) is very very small. Especially if you have a large content (like a book) with hundreds of pages, you might need 15 or even more minutes to store the object on the mobile phone if the eBook-Mode is not activated. With the eBook mode you need only a few seconds.
We recommend you to activate the eBook mode if your content consists only out of text and images (and links) and if the number of pages are greater than 50.

This is a not a true activity - it is a "dummy" activity that allows you to insert text and graphics among the other activities on the course page.

The Chat module allows participants to have a real-time synchronous discussion via the web. This is a useful way to get a different understanding of each other and the topic being discussed - the mode of using a chat room is quite different from the asynchronous forums. The Chat module contains a number of features for managing and reviewing chat discussions.

This activity allows participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary.

The entries can be searched or browsed in many different formats.

The glossary also allows teachers to export entries from one glossary to another (the main one) within the same course.

Finally, it is possible to automatically create links to these entries from throughout the course.

Resources are content: information the teacher wants to bring into the course. These can be prepared files uploaded to the course server; pages edited directly in Moodle; or external web pages made to appear part of this course.

This module allows the teacher to design and set quiz tests, consisting of multiple choice, true-false, and short answer questions. These questions are kept in a categorised database, and can be re-used within courses and even between courses. Quizzes can allow multiple attempts. Each attempt is automatically marked, and the teacher can choose whether to give feedback or to show correct answers. This module includes grading facilities.

Assignments allow the teacher to specify a task that requires students to prepare digital content (any format) and submit it by uploading it to the server. Typical assignments include essays, projects, reports and so on. This module includes grading facilities.