What is a branching activity and why can it be useful
Branching activities allow learners to make choices and experience different outcomes based on their decisions. Instead of passively consuming content, learners actively engage with realistic situations and see the consequences of their actions. This makes learning more relevant, memorable, and effective—especially for topics that involve judgment, problem-solving, or real-world application. They are a good choice for scenario-based training, soft skills development, compliance situations, and process or safety training where “what you do next” matters more than memorizing information.
On atingi, branching activities can be either built with a moodle ‘Lesson’ activity or with a variation of different H5P activity types. The main difference between the Moodle Lesson activity and H5P activities lies in their purpose and how they track learner behaviour. Moodle Lesson is the better choice when tracking, grading, and structured decision logic are required, while H5P activities are ideal when the goal is to create engaging, visually rich branching experiences with lighter reporting needs. It is of course possible to add a graded quiz in addition to the ungraded H5P activities in any course.
Moodle Lesson Activity
The Moodle Lesson activity is designed specifically for structured, decision-based learning. It supports complex branching with multiple paths and outcomes and offers strong tracking and reporting. Trainers can see detailed information about learner progress, answers, attempts, time spent, and grades. Branching is based on clear rules that determine where learners go next, which makes the Lesson activity particularly suitable for compliance training, assessed scenarios, and situations where reporting is important. Its presentation is usually more text-focused and less visual, but it provides reliable learning analytics.
Tracking in moodle Lesson Activities:
The Lesson activity supports branching scenarios while still providing tracking and reporting. Because learners may follow different paths, tracking works differently than in a standard quiz, but each learner’s individual journey is recorded. Learners do not need to view all pages—only their chosen path counts. Completion is defined by the course creator and can be based on either:
- reaching the end of the lesson
- achieving a minimum grade
- or viewing a set number of pages.
Grading is based only on question pages. Content pages are used for storytelling and navigation and do not affect the score. Questions can award points, provide feedback, and direct learners to different paths. When learners encounter different numbers of questions, the system automatically normalizes scores so no path is advantaged or penalized.
If multiple attempts are allowed, each attempt is tracked separately, and the final grade is calculated using the selected method (highest, average, first, or last attempt). Trainers and managers can view results via the Lesson reports, which show:
- completion status
- grades
- attempts
- time spent
- and detailed learner paths, including pages visited and answers selected.
Building a moodle lesson activity with different paths:
Step 1: Add a Lesson activity
- Go to your course
- Turn Edit mode on
- Click Add an activity or resource
- Select Lesson
- Click Add
Step 2: Configure basic lesson settings
- Enter a Lesson name (e.g. Customer Complaint Scenario)
- In Description, explain what learners will learn in the lesson
- Under Appearance:
- Disable Progress bar (recommended for branching activities)
- Under Flow control:
- Set Allow review to Yes (optional if you want learners to be able to go back inside the lesson)
- Set Maximum number of attempts if needed
- Set Grade = 100
- Practice lesson = No (This makes the questions count toward the course grade)
- Under Grade
- Click Save and display
Step 3: Add your first Content Page
- Click Add a content page
- Enter:
- Page title (e.g. The Situation)
- Page contents (describe the scenario .e.g of an unhappy customer sending a complaint email)
- Under Content 1:
- Enter choice text (e.g. Apologise and ask questions)
- Select Jump as Next page for now
- Under Content 2:
- Enter another choice (e.g. Defend company policy)
- Select Jump as Next page for now
- Click Save page
Step 4 – Create branching paths: Now you create one page for each option.
- Under the column Actions, Click Add a Content page
Title: You Apologise
- Content: Describe what happens when the learner apologises.
- Under Content 1: Describe what happens next; e.g. knowledge check; and jump to next page
- Click Save Page
- Add another Content page in the same way as the
previous one which describes a different way for learners to continue, e.g.
learners choose a different way to deal with customer feedback
- Title: E.g. You
Defend Company Policy
Content: Describe the less helpful response. - Under Content 1: Describe what happens next; e.g. knowledge check; and jump to next page
- Click Save Page
- Now return to The Situation (Your first content page)
- Click Edit
- Set the Jump for each choice:
- Apologise → Select the already created content page for the first choice to continue
- Defend policy → Select the already created content page for the second option to continue
- Click Save
Step 5 – Add graded Question Pages: These are where marks are awarded.
- Place a Question page after important decisions, such as after your two content pages “You Apologise” and “You Defend Policy”
- Click Add a question page
- Choose your preferred question type, e.g. multiple choice, true/false, etc
- Click Add a Question Page
- Define your question to the learners
- Answer 1 (correct)
- Answer: Ask for the order number and apologise again
- Response: Correct – this shows empathy and gathers information.
- Jump: Continue
- Score: 1
- Answer 2 (wrong)
- Answer: Tell them delays are normal
- Response: This does not show good customer service.
- Jump: This page or send the learner to a new content page giving more context about the topic to help them understand better
- Score: 0
- You can add also more answer options or choose multiple correct answers as you like
- Click Save page This question now contributes to the lesson grade and forces learners to answer correctly before progressing
Step 6 – Add different questions for different branches
- Repeat Step 5 after You Defend Policy, but write questions that reflect the poorer choice. This allows for Good paths → easier questions and Poor choices → harder questions or more explanations
Step 7 – Create feedback endings
- Add Content pages for final outcomes of each of your paths that learners can take. Each should include:
- Set Jump = End of lesson
- A summary of their performance
- What they did well / poorly
Step 8 – Control where answers send learners
- For every Question Page:
- Correct answers → jump forward
- Wrong answers → jump back to:
- The same question, or
- A content page explaining what went wrong
You can add more paths for learners and repeat content and question pages for interactive courses with knowledge checks and adaptive content to the learners’ knowledge.
H5P
H5P activities focus more on visual engagement and storytelling. They are generally faster and easier to build than a lesson activity with different pathways. Branching in H5P is usually navigation-based and works best for simple to medium complexity scenarios. Tracking is more limited and typically focuses on completion rather than grading. These activities are well suited for soft skills training, exploratory learning, and video-based scenarios where engagement is more important than formal assessment.
Please note that you can always additionally add a moodle quiz activity after a H5P activity. That way, you can create engaging scenario-based content added by a graded knowledge check in a separate activity.
Branching Scenario
The H5P Branching Scenario is especially useful when you want to create engaging, visually rich decision-based content with minimal setup. Its main advantage is ease of use: branching paths are built visually, making it easy to understand and adjust the flow of a scenario without dealing with complex settings. It supports text, images, video, and simple questions, which makes it well suited for storytelling and immersive learning experiences.
Building a H5P Branching Scenario
Step 1: Add an H5P activity
- Go to your course
- Turn Edit mode on
- Click Add an activity or resource
- Select H5P
- Click Add
Step 2: Choose content type
- Click Use content bank to manage H5P files
- Click Add and choose Branching Scenario from the dropdown list
Step 3: Build the scenario structure. Please see the detailed video tutorial from H5P here and follow the step-by-step instructions how to build a branched scenarios Branching Scenario Tutorial | H5P or by clicking on the “?” icon on the left side inside the activity menu.