I've created a family of 6 simple course formats to improve communication in courses and combat the 'scroll of death'! These formats work with Moodle 1.9, but could easily be adapted to work with earlier versions (if there is demand for this I wouldn't mind doing the necessary work).
Here's a summary of what each new format does:
- Noticeboard format - This format is similar to the Social format. It displays the latest post from the News forum at the top of the course home page (only one post is displayed). There is also a 'topics' area below the noticeboard, allowing you to add activities and resources to the page.
- Activities format - Automatically generates links to activity types in the main content area (middle column) like the Activity modules block does. Avoids the need to create lots of links on the course home page, thus saving your users from the 'scroll of death'!
- Noticeboard/activities format - This is simply a hybrid of the two courses above.
- Meta format - Automatically provides links to the child courses associated with a Meta course.
- Meta noticeboard format - A combination of the Meta and Noticeboard formats.
Demos of the formats, along with the download for the 6 formats, can be found here.
Hope you find them useful,
Marty