What is the Lessons tool?
The Lessons tool is present on many course sites, commonly in the form of a Course Information page and a Weekly Content page on the tool menu. If present, the Weekly Content page also contains multiple subpages labeled “Week 1”, “Week 2”, etc.
For instructors the Lessons tool provides a framework for building, organizing, and presenting cohesive instructional content. With this tool instructors post files, links, activities, or explanatory text in a student-friendly format. On Lessons pages, instructors add blocks of rich-text and links to other content stored in Resources, Assignments, Discussions, and Tests & Quizzes. Lessons pages can also incorporate video and audio. A simple example of a Lesson page is depicted below. For more details about the kinds of content that can added to a Lessons page, see the article, What items can I add to a Lessons page?
Also with the Lessons tool instructors can organize and present course material by week, by unit, or by any other scheme that most intuitively represents the flow of the course. Course sites based off the Standard template adopt a structure that organizes content by week, though instructors are free to forego this scheme and create a scheme that makes the most sense for their course. The Lessons page hierarchy that represents the organizational scheme for a site is presented in the Index of Pages.
More details are available for organizing and rearranging pages in a site, including how to move, copy, and delete pages.
A Simple Example
The first figure below displays an example Lessons page seen from an instructor's perspective. The page entitled 'Week 1' incorporates a few blocks of rich text, two links to readings stored in the Resources tool, and a link to an assignment from the Assignments tool.
The figure below shows the corresponding student view of the same page above.
This simple example of a Lessons page demonstrates how Lessons can incorporate content associated with a variety of tools (e.g., Resources and Assignments) and present them on a single page for a clear, cohesive unit of instruction.
