Man course formats

The MAN course formats are a family of 6 formats designed to reduce the number of links on the course homepage and improve course communication. These formats are based on the 'Topics' and 'Social' formats.

Why MAN?

MAN stands for Meta, Activities and Noticeboard. These are the names of the 3 main course formats in the family:

Meta format - Automatically links to child courses from the course home page. You can run large courses more efficiently by splitting them into several courses, e.g. each topic in your course could be a separate child course in Moodle. The Meta course acts as a portal to the 'topic' courses.

Activities format - Duplicates the functionality of the 'Activity modules' block in the main content area of a course. This avoids the need to manually add links to the course homepage, drastically reducing the length of the page (and administration time when adding new resources).

Noticeboard format - Displays the latest post from the News forum at the top of the course home page. Ensures only the most relevant information is displayed on the course home page.

Hybrid formats

There are also 3 'hybrid' formats included in the download:

Noticeboard/activities format - Combines the functionality of the Noticeboard and Activities formats.

Meta noticeboard format - A noticeboard format that also displays child courses on the home page if the course is a Meta course.

Meta noticeboard/activities format - Three formats in one! Displays list of child courses, noticeboard and activity category links in the main content area.

Links

Link to more information (including demo courses) [1]

Entry in Modules and plugins database [2]