Course formats: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 15:30, 18 May 2013

A course format refers to the layout of a course. The course format can be selected in Settings > Course administration > Edit settings.

An administrator can enable, disable or delete course formats for courses in Settings>Site administration>Plugins>Courses>Course formats>Manage course formats. They can also change the order in which available course formats are displayed to teachers in the course settings. New feature
in Moodle 2.4!

Manage course formats screen for admins

Standard course formats

Weekly format

Weekly format example

The course is organized week by week, with a clear start date and a finish date. Moodle will create a section for each week of your course. You can add content, forums, quizzes, and so on in the section for each week.

TIP: If you want all your students to work on the same materials at the same time, this would be a good format to choose.

NOTE: Make sure your course start date is correct. If it is not your weeks will have the wrong date on it. This is especially important if you are restoring a course to use with a new section of students.

Topics format

Topic format example

The course is organised into topic sections that a teacher can give titles to. Each topic section consists of activities, resources and labels.

TIP: This is great to use if your course is objective based and each objective may take different amounts of time to complete. An example of this would be scaffolding where the students are building upon the knowledge from earlier topics.

"Show only one section"

With the Weekly format and the Topics format it is possible via Settings > Course administration > Edit settings to "show one section per page". Here is a course with three topics, with the second one currently shown. The links left and right lead to topics 1 and 3:

Notes:

The course home page shows just the section names and any text in the section description, with the names being clickable.
If editing is ON, on the Main course page, then you will see all the content in all the sections.
There is a link at the bottom "Return to Main course page" on each single section page.

Social format

Social format example

This format is oriented around one main forum, the social forum, which appears listed on the main page. It is useful for situations that are more free form. They may not even be courses. The Moodle Lounge is an example of a social format course.

The social forum can be edited by clicking the 'Update this forum' button on the social forum page. The forum introduction is displayed at the top of the course page.

SCORM format

The SCORM format only has 1 section, and allows teacher to insert a pre-built SCORM package. Moodle can use SCORM packages as a content type (see SCORM module), or as a course format.

An example of SCORM format is the New Staff Induction course on the School demo site

Note: If you have a large SCORM object you want to use as an entire course, then you can select this course format and students will only be able to interact with the SCORM object, not the rest of the Moodle tools.

Contributed Course Formats

The Moodle community has developed a number of course formats, available in the plugins directory. If you plan to create a new one, see Developers documentation.

See MDL-27646 and MDL-28555 and maybe the discussion http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=175758#p770737

Collapsed Topics

This is a format that is essentially the same as the standard Topic and Weekly formats but with a 'toggle' for each section except '0'. The toggles' purpose is to reduce the amount of initial information presented to the user thus reducing the 'scroll of death' that can plague courses with a lot of content. The 'state' of the toggles is remembered on a per course per user basis. For more information, please visit Collapsed_Topics_course_format.

Overview

For an overview of 'Collapsed Topics' please see this video:

<mediaplayer>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9NaEAPPC5E</mediaplayer>

Daily format

The daily format is a modification of the weekly format that shows sections by day rather than by week.

Grid format

The grid format is a modular and visual course format. Hides all topics and creates a grid of icons (one for each topic) with short titles. Clicking on an icon brings up the content from the corresponding topic in a "lightbox" style display.

Menutopic format

The menutopic format allows you to display the topics/sections in a menu.

Noticeboard format

The Noticeboard format presents the latest post in the news forum at the top of the course.

Onetopic format

The onetopic format shows each topic in a tab, keeping the current tab between calls to resources, in such a way that when it returns from a module as the blog or the glossary it returns to tab from where you started. This format is based on the Moodle standard format: “Topics”.

Topic format (colors)

The colored topic format is based on the 'Topics' standard format and allows a teacher to specify the foreground and background colours for each course section.

Flexible sections format

The flexible sections format for Moodle 2.4+ allows to have nested sections and each section may be displayed expanded (with all content on the parent section page) or collapsed (as a link to a separate page)

Single activity format

The single activity format for Moodle 2.4+ does not have a course main page and immediately redirects to the activity. It is similar to SCORM format except that it can have any activity type.

Other contributed course formats are available from the modules and plugins database.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-A course format refers to the layout of a course.  They can be changed by the course [[Course administration block]] under [[Course settings|settings]].
+{{Courses}}
+A course format refers to the layout of a course.  The course format can be selected in ''Settings > Course administration > Edit settings''.
+An administrator can enable, disable or delete course formats for courses in ''Settings>Site administration>Plugins>Courses>Course formats>Manage course formats.'' They can also change the order in which available course formats are displayed to teachers in the course settings.
+{{New features}}
+{|
+|[[File:managecourseformats.png|thumb|Manage course formats screen for admins]]
+|}
 ==Standard course formats==
 ===Weekly format===
-[[Image:Course top weekly mu1.jpg|thumb|Weekly format example]] The course is organized week by week, with a clear start date and a finish date.  Moodle will create a section for each week of your course.  You can add content, forums, quizzes, and so on in the section for each week.
+[[Image:Weeklyoutline.png|thumb|Weekly format example]] The course is organized week by week, with a clear start date and a finish date.  Moodle will create a section for each week of your course.  You can add content, forums, quizzes, and so on in the section for each week.
 :''TIP:'' If you want all your students to work on the same materials at the same time, this would be a good format to choose.
+:''NOTE:'' Make sure your course start date is correct. If it is not your weeks will have the wrong date on it. This is especially important if you are restoring a course to use with a new section of students.
 ===Topics format===
-The course is organised into topic sections. Each topic section consists of activities.
+[[Image:Topicoutline.png|thumb|Topic format example]]The course is organised into topic sections that a teacher can give titles to. Each topic section consists of activities, resources and labels.
+TIP: This is great to use if your course is objective based and each objective may take different amounts of time to complete. An example of this would be scaffolding where the students are building upon the knowledge from earlier topics.
+===="Show only one section"====
+With the Weekly format and the Topics format it is possible via ''Settings > Course administration > Edit settings'' to "show one section per page". Here is a course with three topics, with the second one currently shown. The links left and right lead to topics 1 and 3:
+[[File:showonlyonesection.png]]
+''Notes:''
+#The course home page shows just the section names and any text in the section description, with the names being clickable.
+#If editing is ON, on the Main course page, then you will see all the content in all the sections.
+#There is a link at the bottom "Return to Main course page" on each single section page.
 ===Social format===
-[[Image:Course top social mu1.jpg|thumb|Social format example]] This format is oriented around one main [[Forum module|forum]], the social forum, which appears listed on the main page.  It is useful for situations that are more free form.  They may not even be courses. The [http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=55 Moodle Lounge] is an example of a social format course.
+[[Image:Socialformat.png|thumb|Social format example]] This format is oriented around one main [[Forum module|forum]], the social forum, which appears listed on the main page.  It is useful for situations that are more free form.  They may not even be courses. The [http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=55 Moodle Lounge] is an example of a social format course.
-The social forum can be edited by clicking the 'Update this forum' button on the social forum page. The forum introduction is displayed at the top of the course page (in Moodle 1.9.5 onwards).
+The social forum can be edited by clicking the 'Update this forum' button on the social forum page. The forum introduction is displayed at the top of the course page.
-===LAMS course format===
+===SCORM format===
-[[LAMS|The Learning Activity Management System]] is an open source LMS which allows teachers to use a flash based authoring environment for developing learning sequences.  LAMS has been integrated with Moodle to allow teachers to develop LAMS activities within a Moodle course.  This course format makes LAMS central to the course, only displaying the LAMS interface.
+The SCORM format only has 1 section, and allows teacher to insert a pre-built SCORM package. Moodle can use SCORM packages as a content type (see [[SCORM module]]), or as a course format.
-:''TIP:'' If you are interested in using LAMS, check with your system administrator to see if they have installed and configured LAMS.  Very few institutions use LAMS as it duplicates much of the Moodle functionality.
+An example of SCORM format is [http://school.demo.moodle.net/course/view.php?id=112 the New Staff Induction course on the School demo site]
-===SCORM format===
+Note: If you have a large SCORM object you want to use as an entire course, then you can select this course format and students will only be able to interact with the SCORM object, not the rest of the Moodle tools.
-The [[SCORM/AICC module|Sharable Content Reference Model]] (SCORM) is a content packaging standard.  SCORM packages are self-contained bundles of content and JavaScript activities, which can send data to Moodle about the students score and current location.  Moodle can use SCORM packages as a content type (see [[SCORM/AICC module]]), or as a course format.
+==Contributed Course Formats==
+The Moodle community has developed a number of course formats, available in the [https://moodle.org/plugins/browse.php?list=category&id=19 plugins directory]. If you plan to create a new one, see [https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Course_formats Developers documentation].
+See MDL-27646 and MDL-28555 and maybe the discussion http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=175758#p770737
+===Collapsed Topics===
+This is a format that is essentially the same as the standard Topic and Weekly formats but with a 'toggle' for each section except '0'.  The toggles' purpose is to reduce the amount of initial information presented to the user thus reducing the 'scroll of death' that can plague courses with a lot of content.  The 'state' of the toggles is remembered on a per course per user basis.  For more information, please visit [[Collapsed_Topics_course_format]].
+==== Overview ====
+For an overview of 'Collapsed Topics' please see this video:
+<mediaplayer>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9NaEAPPC5E</mediaplayer>
-:''TIP:'' If you have a large SCORM object you want to use as an entire course, then you can select this course format and students will only be able to interact with the SCORM object, not the rest of the Moodle tools.
+===Daily format===
+The [https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=format_days daily format] is a modification of the weekly format that shows sections by day rather than by week.
-===Weekly format, CSS/no tables===
+===Grid format===
-The CSS / No Tables variant of the Weekly format displays the Weekly course format without using tables for layout.  This improves the accessibility of the format, but older browsers have trouble displaying it correctly. This format is available in Moodle 1.6 onwards.
+The [https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=format_grid grid format] is a modular and visual course format. Hides all topics and creates a grid of icons (one for each topic) with short titles. Clicking on an icon brings up the content from the corresponding topic in a "lightbox" style display.
-==Contributed course formats==
+===Menutopic format===
+The [https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=format_menutopic menutopic format] allows you to display the topics/sections in a menu.
-===Page format===
+===Noticeboard format===
-Also known as Flexpage, this format is very similar to the Book resource format in a Moodle course. It consists of a theme, course format, and menu module which enables blocks and modules to be intermixed on a 3 column layout, provide tab based navigation through course content, inline display of resources and forums, etc.  For more information on Flexpage, please visit [http://development.moodlerooms.com/course/view.php?id=34 this site] (You can self-register for this Moodle course.) This feature was developed by a Moodle partner [http://www.moodlerooms.com MoodleRooms]
+The [https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=format_noticebd Noticeboard format] presents the latest post in the news forum at the top of the course.
-===Collapsed Topics and Weeks formats===
+===Onetopic format===
+The [https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=format_onetopic onetopic format] shows each topic in a tab, keeping the current tab between calls to resources, in such a way that when it returns from a module as the blog or the glossary it returns to tab from where you started. This format is based on the Moodle standard format: “Topics”.
-Collapsed Topics and its sister format, Collapsed Weeks are formats that are essentially the same as the standard Topic ([[Course_sections#Topics_format]]) and Weekly ([[Course_sections#Weekly_format]]) formats but with a 'toggle' for each section except '0'.  The toggles' purpose is to reduce the amount of initial information presented to the user thus reducing the 'scroll of death' that can plague courses with a lot of content.  The 'state' of the toggles is remembered on a per course per user basis.  Collapsed Weeks automatically opens the current week.  There are versions available for Moodle 1.8, 1.9 and 2.0.  For more information, please visit [[Collapsed_Topics_course_format]] and [[Collapsed_Weeks_course_format]].
+===Topic format (colors)===
+The [https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=format_colours colored topic format] is based on the 'Topics' standard format and allows a teacher to specify the foreground and background colours for each course section.
-===Other contributed course formats===
+===Flexible sections format===
+The [https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=format_flexsections flexible sections format] for Moodle 2.4+ allows to have nested sections and each section may be displayed expanded (with all content on the parent section page) or collapsed (as a link to a separate page)
-Other contributed course formats include [[Project Course Format]], [[Weekly Tabs]], Monthly Format (for Moodle 1.9), [[Development:Timeline course format|Timeline course format]] and the [[Shared activities course format]].
+===Single activity format===
+The [https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=format_singleactivity single activity format] for Moodle 2.4+ does not have a course main page and immediately redirects to the activity. It is similar to SCORM format except that it can have any activity type.
-An administrator wishing to remove installed formats may do so by removing the format plugin from the installation. That is: remove the directory containing the format for the ''moodle/course/format'' directory. You probably should not remove any of the default course formats, or formats that are in use on the site.
+Other contributed course formats are available from the [http://moodle.org/plugins modules and plugins database].
 ==See also==
-*[[Course settings]]
 *Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=47 Course formats forum]
 *[http://www.moodleman.net/archives/47 Getting the most out of course design] blog post describing various contributed course formats
@@ Line 55: / Line 97: @@
 *[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=136453 RSS Feed for forum in a Social Format course]
-[[Category:Course format]]
+[[de:Kursformate]]
+[[es:FormatoCurso]]
 [[fr:Formats de cours]]
-[[es:FormatoCurso]]

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