Activity Types - A Brief Introduction

1. Introduction

As you spend more time building your course you'll uncover a number of activities and resources that provide you with multiple ways to create and share content with your learners (and assess their progress). 

As a quick refresher: An activity is something a learner does with others. In other words, an activity requires interaction with other learners and/or the instructor - like participating in a forum, taking a survey, or adding to a glossary. 

In contrast, a resource is something a learner does independently. In other words, a resource is for passive learning resources like a book, a URL, or a file. Please note that "passive" is not a bad thing in this context. A novel is technically a passive learning resource, but that doesn't mean a novel is a bad learning resource. 

Resource options were covered in the previous course topic, Building & Editing Your Course. In this section we'll cover four common activities many instructors use, but please keep in mind that there are many more available for use.