Courses and course formats

As far as Im aware, there isn't from within the Moodle UI. You can kinda hack it into any courses if you need to, but it's a bit ugly.

You first need to change your user preferences to use the 'plain text area' text editor. This is so Atto/Tiny doesn't strip out any of the code you write.

On the course in question, edit the general section / section-0 and make sure the summary text area is using HTML format. Then, paste the following code into the text area:

<script>
addEventListener('load', (event) => { 
if( document.getElementById('collapsesections').getAttribute('aria-expanded') === 'true') {
   setTimeout( () => { document.getElementById('collapsesections').click(); }, 1000) ;
   }
} );
</script>

This check to see if the document is fully loaded and then if the collapse sections element is not already set to collapsed. It then clicks this element after a 1 second delay (Im unsure exactly why we need the 1 sec delay - Ive asked elsewhere to see if I can find a more elegant solution).

Once you've checked that it works, you can change your editor back to Atto/Tiny, but will need to return to the plain text area if you want to change the code for any reason.

Obviously this is on a course by course basis. You should be able to perform the save using the Site Admin > Appearance > Additional HTML > Within HEAD section, although I haven't tested this.

As an aside, the topics / weekly course formats really need this option built into their settings (i.e. start collapsed) as well as an in-between where the section summary is shown, but the activities are collapsed. Also, give me a setting to not show the general / topic-0 on every page when one section per page is selected!