Course appearance

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A course's appearance can be individualized by the teacher.

In general, a teacher can make two courses with the same content and identical activities, look very different. This is done by course settings, themes, adding or moving blocks, editing section/topic headings, hiding and revealing activities, adding labels and understanding the use of context upon students. demo.moodle.net has examples of course that look very different from one another.

The site administration settings may force some appearance elements upon a course that the teacher can not control.

Teacher impact on course appearance

Most courses have more than one visible vertical columns. The widest column usually has horizontal dividers called sections or topics. The narrow column(s) contains blocks.

• Course homepage - the first thing the student and teacher sees when they enter the course.
• Course sections - These usually have headings, contain Activities, Resources and Labels.
• Course blocks - There are a wide variety of blocks that can be added to a course.
• Course theme - The site may allow the teacher to select a theme for their course or activities. A theme is a set of graphical instructions that effect the look and feel of Moodle.
• Course language - The site may allow the teacher to force the course to display a specific language. For example the words "Topic outline" in English becomes "Themen dieses Kurses" when switched to German.

Tip: Moodle will initially assist the teacher with the 4 basic principles of web design (contrast, alignment, repetition, proximity) by it's default settings. It also provides teachers with a tool box that includes navigation, text and image editing features to assist the teacher and their students. Ultimately, it is the teacher's responsibility to understand and make the best use of their teaching environment and their course's appearance.

Site administration impacts on course appearance

The site may determine many default settings and will impact a course. Typically these settings can be found in the Settings > Site administration menu. For example the site may limit the use of themes in a course, or place a sticky block that will appear in every course's home page. Here is a list of potential places in the Site administration menu which have or contain sub-menus with settings that can impact what a user sees.

Settings > Site administration

• Advanced features
• Course default settings
• Grade settings
• Language settings
• Plugin settings
  • Activity
  • Blocks
  • Filters
  • Text editors
  • Repositories
  • Question behaviors
  • Question types
  • Local plugins - if any
• Appearance - has many submenus including Themes, Calendar, Course contacts, Ajax and Java scripts and the Additional HTML settings code.
• Reports
• Comments
• Statistics

Tip: As students bring different skill sets into the classroom so do teachers. Consider creating different teacher roles that may or may not allow a teacher to change some or all course defaults that impact appearance.