In the previous page (the Demonstration), we showed you what the Digital Teacher Web-based lessons look like on your (or your student's) browser. In this chapter, we will discuss what elements compose the lesson pages.
The figure shows us the first page (chapter) in a Digital Teacher web lesson. The window contains a number of elements, which are the building blocks of the Digital Teacher web lesson page.
- Chapter box
- Inline Reading box
- Question box
- Answer box
- Menu box
We can customize the look by resizing and relocating these
boxes to suit our particular requirements. We can also change border styles,
background colors, and distances between boxes.
From the title bar, we know that the lesson name is MyLesson, and the student who is currently taking this lesson is Donald Duck. Note: The student's name is displayed on the title bar of the .ASP type lesson window only.
When a lesson is timed, the time value (22:35) is displayed in the Timer box, which you can
position at the location of your choice on the lesson window.
The page count readout in the Chapter box indicates that this lesson contains 10 chapters. The first chapter name is Creating Web Lesson. Donald can move to another chapter (page) using the page navigation links. Note that we can also call a "chapter" a "page" in the Digital Teacher web lesson, but it doesn't refer to a web page. A Digital Teacher web lesson is always a single (HTM or ASP) web page file although it appears to be composed of multiple web pages.
We can also include all the other question types that are supported by the Digital Teacher authoring program - such as Single Short Answer, Multiple Short Answer, True/False, Yes/No, Correct/Incorrect, Fill-in-the-Blank, Sequential, Essay, and Instructional.
In the Question box, the question numbering is followed by the question. We can show or hide this question numbering.
Below the question text, we have 2 clickable links - Hint and Answer. Clicking these links will show Donald a hint and the correct answer to the question. The Hint link will be shown only when the current question contains a hint. The Answer link will be shown only when we want it to be shown. These links can be replaced with clickable images if we want to.
For all types of question except the "Instructional" type, answer choices for each question are displayed in the Answer box. The "Instructional" question is just any text we would want to include in a lesson without requiring the student to answer. We would want to include this type to create tutorials or course materials. Or, perhaps we will want to include it in front of each question group just for an instruction. Therefore, it is not really a question although we call it the "Instructional" question type.
The menu box at the bottom contains several clickable links.
When Donald clicks the Report link, another window will be displayed showing him his performance results. We can disable this link if we want to.
The Submit link is currently being disabled in the lesson shown in the example. If we wanted to collect Donald's results for this lesson, the link would have been enabled. If he clicked on it, his performance results would have been submitted to the lesson database on our server so that we could further manipulate them for various analyses.
The second chapter shown in the figure contains no inline reading. Instead, it contains a popup (hidden) reading. The popup reading is displayed in a new window when Donald clicks on the Reading link.
One popup reading can be included in each chapter. The reading can be timed. When a timed lesson contains timed popup reading, the timer for the lesson is suspended while the timed reading is open. The lesson timer resumes when the reading is closed.
Note: To see how to add and open external documents from the Digital Teacher lesson page, please see the Adding external documents to lesson topic in Chapter 11: Adding Multimedia to your lesson.
When we create a web lesson in the "course" style, the Inline Reading box displays all the chapter names and the question text for each chapter in the reading box. And they serve as Table of Contents, from which we (our studdents) can move through the lesson. That is, each item in the Table of Contents box functions as a topic link. By clicking a link, we will be able to move to the topic.
By authoring our lesson with the "Instructional" type questions only (or combined with other types of question if we want), and creating the lesson in the "course" style, we can use it as a study material, a tutorial, or somthing that can be used in a web-based training course.
Note: The Digital Teacher web lesson created as Course style cannot contain inline or popup reading. However, by including reading text in the Instructional type of question, you can achieve the simliar result. Also, see Adding external documents to lesson.
Our web lesson can be presented with all the questions displayed on a single window.
When presented on a single window, all the inline readings (if any) in the lesson become available as popup readings.
On the lesson window presented in this style, the menu bar does not contain the question navigation links since we move through questions up and down using the vertical scroll bar.
Note: Most people do not like to read a single, long scrolling page. When possible,
present lessons in the multi-page style.
So far, we have explained that there are three styles available for a way a lesson is displayed.
We can choose one of these styles inside from the Digital Teacher authoring program. Please refer to the figure.
By now, you should have a general understanding of what composes the Digital Teacher web lesson window, and in which style you can create your web lesson.
Note: The inline and pop-up reading become unavailable when a lesson
is published as Course Material. However, by adding links (pointing to external HTML
documents), you can provide the student with extra information.
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