Overview
Lesson clusters are groups of pages within a lesson. Typically, a cluster will house a series of question pages that will appear in a different, random order for each student. Instructors may wish to include clusters when they want to have students answer one or more random questions about the lesson content before continuing with the rest of the lesson.
Note: Clusters are considered an advanced feature of the Lesson activity in GauchoSpace.
Add a Cluster Within a Lesson, Part 1: Understanding Lesson Pages and Button Actions
The best way to stay organized while editing a lesson that contains multiple clusters is to work in the “Collapsed” view of the editing window. This view will display four columns: 1) Page title; 2) Page type; 3) Jumps; and 4) Actions.
Page title – Titles are required for each of your pages, whether they are content pages or question pages. As you create more pages, those pages become “jump” options for future pages (i.e., you can designate particular jump buttons to navigate to specific pages by name, as opposed to having students move only to “next page”).
Page type
- Content pages display learning material that you would like students to view (e.g., text, images, video, etc.).
- When you add a question page, you can indicate the type of question (e.g., T/F, multiple choice, short answer, etc.). Question pages will be listed by the type of question(s) presented on those pages.
- The Cluster, Branch, End of Cluster, and End of Branch page types are place markers in the path of the lesson. Adding a cluster signals that the pages listed below the cluster are meant to be housed in a group. The cluster ends with an End of cluster page type.
Jumps – A question or content page can be designed with a single “jump” button that navigates to the next page, or with multiple jump buttons that navigate to different pages. On a content page, multiple jump buttons will mean that students can decide where to navigate next, given the options provided. On a question page, you may associate different jump buttons with different answers. For example, questions answered incorrectly may navigate to a review page, while questions answered correctly will navigate to the next page. In this collapsed view of the Lesson editing window, the Jumps column will list all possible jumps associated with a single page.
Actions – The Actions column contains icons for page editing tools (“Move page,” “Update page,” “Preview page,” and “Delete page”), as well as an “Add a new page…” drop-down menu.
Add a Cluster Within a Lesson, Part 2: Where to Place the Cluster
When you add a cluster to a lesson sequence, you are adding a group of pages that will be randomly presented to students. However, your lesson may have twenty possible questions and you may only want students to be presented with one or more of four questions at a particular point of the lesson. In the Collapsed view of the Lesson editing window, adding a “Cluster page” will add a placeholder in the lesson path. Pages below the Cluster placeholder will be housed within the Cluster. A Cluster ends after an “End of cluster” placeholder page.
To add a Cluster to a Lesson:
- In your GauchoSpace course page, enter the lesson you wish to edit and select the Edit tab. For best results, view the Lesson pages in the Collapsed view.
- Add a Cluster placeholder by using the Add a new page drop-down menu in the Actions column to select Add a cluster. The page will automatically refresh with a Cluster page in your list of Lesson pages.
- Use the drop-down menu in the Actions column to add Question page(s) that will be contained within the cluster. Edit the pages as needed.
- After the final question in your cluster, you need to add an “End of cluster” placeholder page. To do this, use the Add a new page drop-down menu in the Actions column to select Add an end of cluster. The page will automatically refresh with an End of cluster page in your list of Lesson pages.
Visit our Lesson Reference Guide for more information about Lessons.