Gates
Gates allow teachers to control the flow of students within a lesson.
When you create your learning design you can determine stop points or gates that will allow you to control how the student advanced within your lessson.
For instance, if you are planning to run a synchronous lessons (all the students in the lesson at the same time), then you can use gates to ensure that students start a particular part of the lesson at the same time.
Now, there are different types of gates depending on what might trigger the gate (time, event or condition) to open or close them.
Gate Types
These Gates or stop points halt the progress of students through a lesson, until certain outcomes, time or other condition is achieved.
There are several types of gates:
Permission Gates require a teacher during the lesson to manually open the gate before students can pass continue.
Synchronise Gates require all learners actively participating in the lesson to reach the gate before it opens automatically.
Scheduled Gates open at a specified date and time.
Condition Gates allow a gate to open based on the student's outputs of a previous activity.
Password Gates, allows teachers to setup a password that only if students enter it correctly, they can continue with the lesson.
Creating Gates
You can create Gates from the Flow menu:
Click the Flow Menu, then select Gate.
Click on the canvas to place the Gate in the design.
Create transition lines to and from the Gate.
Gates properties and type options can be edited by using the Properties Inspector.
Permission gates
As its name implies, permission gates allows the teacher to open or close the gate whenever he/she desires. Therefore the process of opening or closing a gate is triggered manually.
While the gate is closed, students will be stopped at the gate activity with a screen as follows:
Open Permission Gates manually
Teachers can open the gates in monitor
Close Gates
New feature
Since LAMS 4.0, gates can also be closed!
Once a gate it is open, the teacher can also close it, preventing students from continue advancing in the lesson.
Synchronise Gates
Synchronise gates requires all the students in the lesson to have reached the gate in order to open automatically. This means that the gate will not open by itself until the last student in the lesson reach the gate.
The rationale behind this gate is for activities in which all students have to commence at once. So in order to ensure that this occurs, you can use the Synchronise gates.
The Synchronise gate will distinguish between students who are assigned to the lesson, and students who are active in the lesson. This means that if there are learners who have not yet started the lesson, the gate will open for the active learners, rather than waiting for the late students to join.
Also, a Sync gate now requires at least two students to be waiting before it opens. This means a Sync gate in a lesson available to only 1 student will need a teacher to manually open the gate. But then again, a sync gate in a lesson for 1 doesn't make sense.
And of course, you can always overwrite any synch gate and open/close them just as you do Permission gates
Scheduled Gates
Scheduled gates allow you to use time to open a gate.
When creating gates in Authoring, you are able to set up when a gate should be open from the moment the lesson starts.
For instance, you can specify that a gate should open 2 days and 4 hours and 30 minutes after the lesson was created.
Reschedule a scheduled gate
However, if you need a gate that open on a specific date, once you create the lesson you are able to set a specific date for the gate to open.
Condition Gates
This type of gate allows you to setup a condition for the gate to open for individual students.
In a way, you are setting up a condition for them to achieve individually before they can continue to the rest of the lesson.
Authoring condition gates
As condition gates open automatically when a condition is met, there's no need for you to manually open the gates.
However, you can still overrule and open the gate for an individual or the whole class manually even if they don't meet the passing condition.
Password Gates
Password gates allow you to set up a password that the students must enter correctly to get through the gate and continue with the lesson.
One typical case that this type of gate is used for is -for instance, if you only want people that are in your classroom to continue. In that case, the teacher can write the password in the whiteboard and all the students in lesson will enter it and continue with their lesson. Students that cannot see the whiteboard (and aren't present in the classroom), wont' be able to continue.
When students get to the gate, they are prompted to enter the password. Only if they enter it correctly, they will be able to continue.
If a student is struggling for some reason, you can always overwrite and allow him/her to continue.
And of course, you can always overwrite any gate and open/close them just as you do Permission gates.
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