Course contents

Blocks ::: block_course_contents
Maintained by David Mudrák
Course contents block displays a list of all visible sections (such as topics or weeks) in the course. Clicking at a link scrolls to that section or displays just that particular section, depending on the course layout setting.
Me at the Moodle Moot NZ11
Stuart Mealor
Friday, 21 April 2017, 10:49 AM
Usability
10/10
Accessibility
10/10
Technical
10/10
General comments

This Block creates a dynamic Table of Contents (TOC) for the Course - a list of all visible Sections (Topics or Weeks).

Clicking on one of the TOC links will display that particular section on the course page.

Although the features can be paralleled using the Navigation Block for example, this plugin does provide some additional control and options that mean it could still add something 'new to the mix' in the way it can pull the Section names, and/or the Section Summary (description) and cleverly use HTML heading styles to build the Table of Contents.

If providing users with simple navigation through long courses is something that is vital for your site then this could be a worthwhile plugin to investigate smile

You can try this Block yourself for real on our public plugins site: http://plugins.moodlebites.com

Usability

The Block is very easy to setup, and basically looks after itself once added.

I like the way each section in the Table of Contents has a number too smile

It is perhaps useful for Teachers to use short section titles / summary descriptions, because if they are long it results in the titles having to wrap in the Block - no way to avoid this - other than having concise section titles.

Accessibility

There are no real accessibility issues here, because the Block is simply creating a list of hyperlinks to each course section.

However, it's worth noting that you can format content in the Summary / Description field and use with the multi-language Filter to generate the Table of Contents in the user's language as specified on their Profile.

Technical

I haven't reviewed the code, but as the plugin is maintained by David Mudrák, a long time Moodle developer and member of the Moodle HQ team, I think we can be very confident it follows best-practice coding guidelines !

This plugin has been developed since 2011, and has regular fixes and updates, so no problem there.

I haven't noticed any adverse performance when adding this to a Course smile