We would like to use the Noticeboard format, but we also prefer to use Collapsed Topics (or better yet, Collapsed Weeks). Or possibly "Flexible Sections." As these are all different "course formats," there is no way to use them all in the same course. Are there any thoughts about combining these formats, or making them pluggable so they can be combined?
Thanks,
Elizabeth Dalton
Granite State College
Well, I haven't actually used the Noticeboard format, but the sections in the flexible sections course format can be collapsed. That said, Gareth has continued doing excellent work in maintaining the collapsible topics format.
As for combining the features of several course formats, Im sure its possible, but you'd have to identify whch features of each one that you want and then look at how much coding and time that might take a developer
The Flexible Sections format only allows the sections to be expanded or collapsed in Edit mode, i.e. not by the students, right?
Gareth, do you have a general estimate of how much money we would need to raise to fund a combined course format?
I am frustrated with the way different functionalities that have been implemented as course formats are not readily able to be combined.
Hi Elizabeth,
I would need to work out how long it would take me. That requires time to figure out what needs to be done in order to understand the tasks involved. What I could do is when I do get a moment is put a proposal on Moodle Garage (http://moodlegarage.com/) and ask for the enhancement to be crowd funded - that way, 10% goes to Moodle HQ, please give me a little time to do this. Then you could fund some / all of the development?
What do you think?
Cheers,
Gareth
That sounds like a great plan.
I think the three formats to combine are actually:
- Flexible Sections (rather than Collapsed Topics/Weeks) -- we have a need to be able to collapse content in the "0" section as well as in later weekly sections
- Weeks (not currently included in Flexible Sections)
- Noticeboard
This would provide a nice format that would help students keep up to date while avoiding the notorious "scroll of death" problem.
We've been using Subpages to help cut down clutter, but that depends on a hack using orphaned sections, and I don't think it's sustainable to keep using it.
The Flexible Sections format is a whole different ball game as I'm not familiar with the code. Therefore days turn into weeks.
I may consider updating CT such that section 0 can be toggled as a part of the package. Would you consider a CT solution if so? As greatly reduced amount of work given that FS does not have weeks.
Actually, what I have done is created a new Activity Module plugin that uses the code from Noticeboard to provide this functionality as an Activity that can be added to the top section of a course, regardless of the Course Format. I think this is a better solution, because it doesn't require merging this functionality with multiple Course Formats, which ideally should only involve course navigation. I have it working with Collapsed Topics now. I'm still working on cleaning out the extra stuff from the sample Module code. I will post to git for review as soon as I have that done.
We like the collapsible features of Flexible Sections -- we are currently using the Subpages module to provide a way to move chunks of activities and other content out of the regular flow of the course and into their own sections, but the functionality provided by Subpages is a bit clunky and really needs a change to Moodle Core, which Moodle HQ declines to make in favor of Flexible Sections.
So what I would hope for is an expansion to Collapsed Topics/Weeks that would allow other collapsible subsections inside a section (topic or week). Then we would add our new Module to provide display of the most recent (or most recent n) News posts.
Interesting Elizabeth
Pragmatically I do not like Flexible Sections (sorry Marina) because it is one of the few course formats that is destructive. That is to say that if you decide later on to change the format of the course to another then you will find that the structure is all over the place. Course formats should be non-destructive, like a 'view' in model - view - controller (MVC). They are a presentation thing that should not affect the underlying structure of the data. So if an educator at some point decides that a new course format is better then switching to that format should give the same section grouping of activities and resources. It is for that reason that I will not introduce the Flexible Sections code into Collapsed Topics.
I agree with you regarding the need for non-destructive Course Formats. There is already a problem with Course Formats being able to alter Blocks displayed in the course. I had not realized (but should have realized) that Flexible Sections would cause the same problem. We won't want to use it, in that case.
Collapsed Topics/Weeks goes a long way toward solving the "scroll of death" problem, but I can still see a case for grouping several Activities and Resources together in some way that allows them to be shown or hidden by the user. What other method of doing this might work in Moodle?
Could some kind of CSS method be used to give the user a way to collapse indented content, like the Tree display in the sidebar menus? I think that would be relatively intuitive for users, if it could be done. It would be great if it could be part of a Course Format, rather than part of a Theme.
Hi Elizabeth,
At our DE site we use the Bootstrap-based theme Shoehorn in Moodle 2.7. Like you, I prefer the Collapsed Topics course format. Sometimes I use the Accordion plugin for additional activities and resources.
Collapsed view of optional activities below:
Expanded view of optional activities below:
Hartmut
Ok, I think I have successfully gotten the current working version of our Activity plugin "newsdisplay" into git here:
https://github.com/emdalton/moodle-mod_newsdisplay
I am new to using git for anything other than installing Moodle, so hopefully I have done this correctly. There is still some cleanup to do here, but I welcome any comments.
@Hartmut, thanks for the info about the Accordion plugin. Is this plugin only available on this page of source, or is there a way to get it as a package I can pass to our hosting provider for review? I assume it will only work with a bootstrap-based theme. We are currently using a different theme, and I'll have to consider how we might migrate to a bootstrap theme.
Also, I see that this plugin uses the "Orphaned Content" area of the course, just as Subpages does. This has caused some confusion with our faculty in the past. We'll need to consider whether this would work for us.
Hi Elizabeth,
I can only give you a link to the discussion where I played with the Accordion plugin. See "Customizing course layout with Javascript." Gareth's answer on June 1, 2014 in that forum discussion will give you more details. I lack programming skills.
"Orphaned Contend" is not related to the plugin. It's only a way to change the appearance of the main course page by reducing the number of visible sections for students, i.e., to make it shorter. So if you don't like "orphaned contend" in a course with 18 topic sections, you could name section 19 "Additional Resources and Activities" (or any other name) and set the number of topics in Course administration to 19. Then, the last topic would be visible to all every time.
With kind regards,
Hartmut
Thanks, I know how orphaned content works. The Subpages plugin works the same way. Changing the language string to something more descriptive might help.
I hope Gareth is able to include this sort of functionality within the course format of Collapsed Topics -- I think that would be a good way to distribute this code.
But it's a bit frustrating to me that there isn't a sub-section function built into Moodle, because workarounds like these tend to be fragile when new versions of Moodle are released, and don't get tested as well as they might if they were in Core.
I am uneasy about adding jQuery to Collapsed Topics when, as Hartmut has demonstrated, that it is easy to leverage the addition of jQuery in a theme to provide the solution. In fact in this case, jQuery is not the whole story as it is just the basis for facilitating the additional functionality provided by the Bootstrap framework and therefore as such is more of a theme than a course format solution. It would be detrimental to the evolution of other frameworks in themes such as YUI Pure and therefore cause more work for me maintaining the format to cope with other contributed themes. So the solution is a themes one and not a course format.
Hi Elizabeth,
Collapsed Topics has incorporated Collapsed Weeks since 2012 / Moodle 2.3 - see note on https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=format_weekcoll. Collapsed Topics has a 'structure' setting when editing the course settings to make this happen.
As for incorporating the functionality of the Noticeboard format, then that is entirely possible only requiring time and hence money.
Kind regards,
Gareth