What is an Exercise and how to use it?
- Gemma Dowsett
- Gosia Morawska (Deactivated)
In this article, you will learn what an Exercise is and how it can be used.
What is an Exercise?
An exercise is an activity that is associated with an item either on or offline.
An Item online (on the platform) is called content and an item offline (not on the platform) is called an Action.
Exercises can drive engagement and ensure knowledge is retained as users are essentially forced to recite knowledge gained, give thoughts, and even create new ideas from content/actions.
Adding Exercises to content
An exercise must always be associated with something. Adding an activity to items on the platform, eg. an article, is classed as an exercise associated with content. Whereas, adding an activity to items that are not on the platform, eg. a meeting, is classed as an exercise associated with an action.
An exercise can also be paired with an assessment as a sure-fire way to incorporate better learning retention from users when engaging with content/actions. Eg. content/action + exercise + assessment =
Scoring Exercises
Exercises can be scored in a couple of ways. You can manually pass/fail the exercise or, you can score the exercise via a scoring rubric. You can select an existing scoring rubric or you can create your own (see here). If you create a scoring rubric, then it will be available in the drop-down menu on the assessment page (see step 4 below).
How to create an Exercise?
There are two ways to create an exercise.
Method A:
Find/view the content you wish to add an exercise to > Click the ellipsis > Click on Add exercise.
Method B:
In the top navigation bar, select the + icon, then select Assessment, and add an Exercise.
Go through the creator:
Step 1: Fill in the exercise overview.
Fill out the title of your exercise.
Outline the exercise in the details box and include all relevant information needed for completion.
Click on Next.
Step 2: Associate the exercise with an item.
Choose whether you will link the exercise to a piece of content (online) or an action (offline).
If you used Method A then this will be filled in automatically for you.
Click on Next.
Step 3: Decide on the details of submission.
This step is compulsory and cannot be left blank.
Click on Next.
Step 4: Choose whether you want to include an assessment.
Depending on what you choose, the options will be different, so please fill in accordingly.
Click on Next.
Step 5: Finalise the submission details.
Pick how many attempts users will have to complete the exercise.
Decide if people should be notified when a user completes the task.
If a user has a status of ‘Not yet invited’ then they won't receive notifications for exercises.
Click on Next.
Step 6: Complete the creation.
Once you’re happy with the results, click Submit. You’ll receive a screen confirming the creation of the exercise or the creator will close.
You can double-check the creation of your exercise and access other exercises via the top navigation bar, by selecting Assess then Exercises.
How to use an exercise:
Take it a step further by adding your exercise to a piece of content.
You can do this by clicking on the three pips in the upper right-hand corner of said content > selecting Add exercise. You can either use content that has already been created or you can create something new.
Exercises can also be created and/or added during the learner engagement step of creating an item (see below).
Feel free to learn more about exercises in-depth by clicking here.