More about the Lesson Activity

7. How to Build a Lesson - Clusters

Clusters are essentially a group of pages in your lesson, usually questions. A cluster typically contains question pages which are presented randomly to each student who does the lesson. If you want your learners to see each question page in the same order, then you don't need clusters. Clusters are useful in two specific cases:

You want to shuffle the order questions are presented to your learners.
You want to randomly pull X number of Y questions (e.g. each learner answers 5 of 10 questions the Lesson randomly selects)

One way to use clusters would be to present information you want your learners to read, watch, or listen to and then you want to present them with a series of questions which must appear in a different order for each student. This is usually set up by adding a content page, followed by a cluster of the accompanying question pages.

Adding a Cluster

Before you can add a cluster, you need a content page(s) with the information you want your students to learn. On the Edit tab in the lesson, use the drop-down Actions menu for the content page and select "Add a cluster".

Add your questions to the Lesson after the cluster. Set all jumps for each question page to "cluster". After your questions are added, return to the Edit tab in the Lesson, click the drop-down Actions menu for the last question in your cluster, and select "Add an end of cluster".

If you want learners to go straight to the end of the lesson after doing the questions, you can make the end of cluster page jump to 'End of lesson'. If you prefer to have a conclusion page (or more pages), then create another content page. We recommend naming the description of the end of cluster page jump to this page's name rather than 'next page'.

Note: If you'd like to fully preview a Lesson that's using a cluster (or clusters), you'll need to log in with an actual learner account. Previewing with the instructor role or switching to a student role will not display it properly.

The last chapter of this book will outline a few ideas for how you can use Lesson within your course.