LAMS Authoring
Sequence Management Tools
Creating Activities
Setting the content for Activities - General Features
To change the Content and behaviour of an activity, simply double click a particular activity to bring up it's Properties Page.. To the Left is a screenshot of the Basic tab of a Forum activity. It contains two elements, a Title and Instructions screen. These elements are found on nearly every activity in LAMS. All tools have a title that is presented at the top of the Learner Environment - this is where you can specify that title. Presented under 'Title' is the 'Instructions' section. This is where the main text to be displayed to the learners is created. (TIP: For other tools there is always a section for text instructions or content, although it may have a different name than 'Instructions, ie: Content, Questions, etc.)
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Properties Inspector
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The Properties Inspector (shown below) provides quick access to some common tasks for Activities: gradebook output, groupings and activity name. Title - This is the name of the activity. It is shown on the activity box in the Authoring Space, as well as on various screens in the Monitoring Environment, and also in the Progress Bar in the Learner Environment. Ideally, you want to keep Activity Titles as short as possible - less than about 20 characters (including spaces) is recommended. Note: The Title is NOT the same as the Name specified on the Properties Page. Instead, the Title specified in the Properties Inspector provides a quick way to distinguish the activity from others of the same type. Grouping - All activities can be set to operate in Whole Class Mode or in Small Group Mode. To operate in Small Group Mode, a Grouping Object must be added to the sequence. Once this is done, any tool can be set to use those groups, creating multiple instantiations of each tool according to the number of groups created. Note: It is possible to create several Grouping Objects and then choose different grouping structures for different tools. Gradebook output - If the activity you have selected supports outputs (grades, time taken or other), they will be available in this drop down menu. Select which activity output you want to send to the gradebook once students complete the activity. The output types vary from activity to activity depending of what the activity does (assessment, reflection, etc). |