Please read the information bellow before you explore the sample e-lessons. It shall help you to better understand and explore the e-lessons' content and their functionality.

Overview
The Universal Curriculum student's resources are designed to support student's learning process (self-study materials). The graphical and functional design of the lessons depends on the subject and age group, but all of the self-study student lessons share the property of detailed learning progress tracking and extensive feedback mechanisms. In this sample the lessons contain a limited amount of reference material (e.g. glossaries, indices, calculating and statistical tools, biographies). The reference material is developed along with the main content.

• a page title,
• a concise introductory text,
• an exercise,
• a reference panel (with buttons to media),
• two helpers (coaches).

These elements are usually situated in the same areas of the page, allowing the user to quickly become familiar with the course and use of its content, in accordance with the inductive method of teaching used by the course author.

• Coach A – informs about the content of a lesson (on the introductory page) and the content of each of the pages,
• Coach B – introduces an exercise, comments on progress when working through the exercise and summarises results once the exercise is complete.

• Makes advantage of content-related support
• Provides an additional source of knowledge,
• Can act as a substitute for a teacher or a detailed help system,
• Gives additional motivation to study using e-content.

The Upper Primary (UP) content samples are a transition between Lower Primary and Secondary content in terms of design and functionality. There are no animated coaches but a text guide for each of the content pages. However, the level of feedback given for activities are much more varied and designed to cope with a wide range of students' competence and characteristics at this level of education.

The Lower and Upper Secondary (LS and US) content levels share the same graphical and functional design. In most countries' curricula the topics from these two stages may be mixed.

The number of activity types is unlimited and directly linked to the topic. Each activity has the same options allowing for accurate progress tracking and relevant, activity specific help in the self-study process.

• A page guide - short information about the learning goals and order of student activities on the page
• A multimedia presentation - animations, videos, simulations, games
• An activity

Each activity, in the bottom right-hand corner, provides a number of options and information. The help options indicator appears when one of the help options (e.g. show answers) from the Activity report window has been used. The error counter makes the student aware of how many errors they have made before they have reached the correct result (counter cannot be cleared). The clear activity icon removes all answers from the activity and the check activity icon opens the Activity report window (below).

The scoring system in Secondary activities provides the following information and options available from the activity report window, accessed via the "check" icon.

Apart from the scoring and progress tracking features, in all activities the following pre-defined, activity-specific methods of feedback are possible:

1. Simple audio feedback 'ding / dong' – audio feedback for any user response , correct, incorrect or completed activities
2. Simple text feedback - displayed in a text area according to a pre-defined action, such as a correct, incorrect or specific answer.
3. Image feedback – mark, tick or simple animations presented on the activity page.
4. Window feedback – pop-up window to display additional information, such as longer text, charts, illustrations, animations, etc.
5. Gradual activity feedback – each stage of an activity is made available only after the previous stage is complete and feedback given.
6. Adaptive feedback and progress dependant on the number of errors made – the following actions are possible:
   1. After the defined number of errors a more simple activity is presented as a remedy and help for the student.
   2. If the activity is solved without a single error, a more difficult activity may be displayed.

Teacher's Resources

Overview
The Universal Curriculum teacher's resources are designed to support teaching process (classroom presentation content sample). The course's graphical content is designed according to the age of the student's using a particular topic and level. From the teacher's perspective, the functionality of all material is the same and is determined by properies set via the Teacher's toolbar.

The teacher's material can be easily delivered via Interactive Whiteboards or multimedia projectors. All of the Teacher's toolbar options are integrated with the course content and can be operated from the teacher's computer.

The teacher's lessons consist of media assets from the student's material as well as additional classroom activities. The presentation content can be freely edited and arranged according to the teacher's and students' specific needs. For more information please see the description of the Teacher's toolbar below.

Teacher's toolbar

The Teacher's toolbar is located at the bottom of each of the classrom presentation lessons. It contains several tools which may be useful during a classroom presentation. The options are described here in the same order, left to right, as they are located on the toolbar.

1. Lesson Builder
Displays a small pop-up window which allows lesson contents to be customised. The teacher may arrange the learning objects into a different order or switch off some objects altogether. The teacher's own settings and preferences are stored into the application for future use. Options are saved when the teacher clicks OK and the lesson navigation toolbar with learning objects numbers change accordingly. The teacher may restore the original order and contents of the lesson with a single click.

2. Drawing tools
This toolbox contains simple drawing tools such Line, Pen and Highlighter. Colours may be selected from the lines and colours toolbox. The teacher selects an icon from this toolbox to draw something on the screen and the mouse cursor changes according to the icon selected. The teacher clicks on the icon again to restore normal functionality.

3. Lines and colours
The teacher selects Line thickness and colours from this toolbox.

4. Text editor
The text editing tool allows the teacher to type any text onto the screen by clicking the 'A' icon and marking part of the screen using the mouse. The text area will be displayed along with the text editing toolbar each time a text area is clicked. The text editing toolbar disappears when the teachers clicks outside the text area. The text area may be removed from the page using the "scissors" option from the "cut and reset" toolbox.

The teacher can edit text modules in the lessons and each of the edited modules have a "reset" icon (a small cross) which restores the original text. In the samples you can click and edit page titles, for example, to see this functionality.

5. Show / hide area
This option allows the teacher to cover parts of the page with a rectangle in order to hide areas on the page to focus students' attention on specific elements. The teacher may also select the area which they want to be visible on the screen, masking the others.

6. Cut and reset
The teacher can erase an object from the page using the "scissors" icon, or they can clear the page entirely using the "clear" icon.

7. Zoom toolbox
The Page zoom options allow the following possibilities:

• Zoom in – a small navigator is displayed in the upper left corner of the screen. The teacher may manipulate the active element in the navigator in order to focus on the relevant part of the screen. The zoom-in is increased each time you click on the + icon,
• Zoom out – opposite to the zoom in function and only active if a fragment of the screen is enlarged.
• Zoom area – allows to the teacher to select a specific area to be enlarged. The cursor changes into a magnifying glass and the relevant area may be selected. The zoom navigator is displayed as for the zoom option. Click the "Zoom area" icon again to restore the mouse cursor and regular functionality.
• No zoom – resets all of the zoom options and brings the teacher back to the original size of the page.

8. Audio on/off
In some cases, it might be desirable to switch off audio, e.g. to silence audio feedback during an activity.

9. Notes
Allows the teacher to open an empty page which can be used for drawing or typing new text using the Editing toolbox options. The Teacher may prepare their own drawing or text as an add-on to the lesson.

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