What is the Lessons tool?

The Lessons tool allows instructors and site owners to organize resources, media, and activities that are housed in other tools in their UVACollab site or elsewhere on the web. By creating direct links to these items on one or more pages, site owners and instructors can simplify the navigation of their sites for their site members, and also exercise more control over when and how site members access course content.  

Unlike most other tools, multiple instances of the Lessons tool may be added to a single course site. This means that instructors and site owners may organize all of their items on a single page or create separate pages for individual units, topics, or group meetings.

Note: For instructions on how to add this or any other tool to your site, see How do I add tools to my site?

Lessons Features

Pages may contain any of the following items:

  • Text and inline links and media added with the Rich-Text Editor
  • Embedded media (e.g., PDFs, images, YouTube or other web videos)
  • Content links to items in Resources such as files or URLs
  • Links to subpages
  • Links to assignments in the Assignments tool
  • Links to published assessments in the Tests & Quizzes tool
  • Links to forum topics in the Discussions tool
  • Checklists to help site participants track tasks
  • Inline questions on the page
  • Option for site participants to add comments on the page
  • Links to Student Pages where site participants may create their own content
  • Content added from external tools (e.g., VoiceThread)

To access this tool, select Lessons from the tool menu in your site.

Note: The page title will appear in the tool menu (e.g., Lessons, Activities, Week: 1).

The structure of a page.

Screenshot shows an example Lessons content area (described below). Graphic link opens modal with larger image. Press Escape to exit modal.

Some of the page layout features in the Lessons tool include:

  1. Use subpages to break down content into smaller chunks, such as topics or units.
  2. Group items on a page using section and column breaks to present content clearly.
  3. Allow users to choose the content they want to view by using collapsible sections.

Get started using the Lessons tool by adding a page.