Setting up the structure of your course

1. Course format options

Moodle offers various course format options which determine the layout of the course page. 

• Topics format - The course page is organised into topic sections.  This format is especially useful if there are distinct topic sections in a course with no time limit on how long a learner might need to spend studying each section.  It is well suited to free standing Open Educational Resources which do not have tutor support.
  
• Weekly format - The course page is organised into weekly sections, with the first week starting on the course start date.  This format is useful if there is a requirement for learners to cover a certain amount of material in each week.  It is usually used for courses which have tutorial support and formal assessment. Please note, if you choose the weekly format, the site design does not have week numbers built into the display as courses in weekly format do on OpenLearn. It is probably easier to just stick with topics format even if you label each topic as dated weeks.
• Free form layout (using the Topics format) - the course structure is flexible and you use headings, labels and content to split out the course page.  This format is useful when there is no time limit for how long a learner might spend studying the material and when the material needs a flexible structure.  It is well suited to free standing Open Educational Resources which do not have tutor support.
• Single activity format - For displaying a single activity or resource (such as a Quiz or SCORM package) on the course page.
• Social format - A forum is displayed on the course page.  This is used when the primary activity in a course focusses on a forum discussion only.
  

Instructions for setting up the Topics format and Free form layout are shown on the following pages.

If you choose to have no section headings (e.g. weekly, topic) and display all your course materials on the course home page in section-0 then the learner activity record will be blank as the system will not pick up any learner activity from section-0.  Therefore, you are strongly advised to create at least one section heading (regardless of which format you use) and put all your course materials, activities and quizzes below that heading so they will be picked up for learner activity records.

2. The topics format

Each topic contains a section/week of learning to make the progression through the course simple to follow, with additional topics used for resources or additional information at the start or end of the course.

This guide has been set up using the Topics section layout. Other examples of the topics format and how this looks on the course content page (the additional tab in the course layout which is generated when a topic is created) can be found at MND MDW Multi-disciplinary Working - making it effective for Motor Neurone Disease and any of the TESSA project courses.

The default is Topics format, so you should be able to add topics on the main course editing page, via the add topic button near the bottom of the screen.

To change to a different format

1. Go to 'Edit settings'
2. Click on 'Course format'
3. Choose format
4. You don't need to alter the 'Hidden sections and 'course layout' fields (these should say 'Hidden sections are completely invisible' and 'show one section per page')
   
5. Save changes

3. The Freeform format

If your open course doesn't have a set structure or is very short you can choose the Free Form layout which means everything will display on one page rather than in sections.  You will use the pages/headings/labels/content links to organise the content over shorter pages.   

Observing the Night Sky: What next? provides a good example of using a free form structure with each separate page view created using Pages (Resources) which have been arranged in sections and sub sections.

To set your open course using Free Form layout

1. Go to 'Edit settings'
2. Click on 'Course format'
3. Choose 'topics' format
4. You don't need to change the 'Hidden sections' fields
   
5. Make sure the 'Course layout' field is 'show all sections on one page'
6. Save changes