Pioneer

Themes ::: theme_pioneer
Maintained by Chris Kenniburg
Pioneer strikes a balance between features and beautiful design. The Pioneer theme is focused on enhancing learning by using intuitive navigation, a simple layout, and amazing styling. You have learning content, Pioneer makes it beautiful.
Latest release:
166 sites
53 downloads
76 fans
Current versions available: 2

Pioneer | features


Features for Site Admins

  • Custom Colors, Logo, Site header image, Course header images, and many more customizations
  • Featured Course Slideshow - Add up to 6 featured courses and Pioneer will take the course image, title, and summary to build a stunning responsive slideshow for you. This appears at the top of the page with a wonderful fade effect between courses.
  • Featured Course Slider - Add up to 12 courses and Pioneer will build a slider which displays 4 courses at a time up to 3 pages of sliding courses.  All you do is add the course ID number for each course and Pioneer takes over to give you a brilliant responsive slider complete with a link to a course category to view more courses.
  • My Courses Slider - Displays a list of user courses in a responsive slider.
  • Personalized Recommended Courses - Uses course tags(Must use Tag Block and tag the course) and profile tags (Profile Interests).  Matching courses are displayed for the user in a responsive slider. 
  • Site Alerts
  • Frontpage Tabs Display - Add up to 6 custom tabs packed with content which are displayed on the frontpage in a powerful hidden slider.  A prominently displayed button is used to show and hide the tabs. The hidden tabs help keep the page clean and neat.  
  • Social Icons - Add custom links with icons to popular social websites.
  • Block Alignment - toggle between left or right aligned blocks.  
  • Two Marketing Spot positions - top and bottom of the page with custom image backgrounds
  • Intuitive Navigation Options: My Courses, This Course, Tools custom menu, 8 custom Icons with tool-tips and links
  • Google Analytics and font support
  • Custom Footer - Provides several textboxes to populate the footer of the page with custom content.
  • Socialwall Course Format Integration - Styling and color selection for elements of the Socialwall course format (separate download and plugin)

Features for Teachers

  • Scroll Spy - A first for Moodle Themes!  The turn editing button is always visible on the page.  When a teacher clicks to turn editing on or off it will return the teacher to wherever they are in the page.  No more scrolling!
  • Customized full-width header Image for each course- On the course settings page a teacher can upload a JPG or PNG image into the “Course Summary Files” box.  This image is used by Pioneer as a header image and is stretched to fill the top part of the page.  Site admins can turn this feature on or off in theme settings.  If off, the image uploaded in theme settings is used by all courses.
  • Control My Courses Dropdown - Uses the Course Overview block to allow users to organize which courses are displayed in the My Courses dropdown.  
  • Two Column Layout - Designed to maximize usability
  • Turn Editing On button is always on screen
  • This Course Dropdown - Quickly organize and navigate course activities
  • My Courses Dropdown - Quickly navigate to your courses

Features for Students

  • Activity Completion Visual Display - Quickly see your course completion in a nice animated radial which shows you the total percent completed in the upper left of the screen. Site Admins must turn this feature on in theme settings and a course must have course completion turned on.
  • Total Course Grade Visual Display - Quickly see your total course grade in a nice animated radial which shows you the total grade percent in the upper left of the screen.  Site admins must turn this feature on in theme settings and the teacher must set the course to show student grades.
  • Course Gradebook Slider - Just like the Frontpage Tabs mentioned above the Course Gradebook Slider will show/hide a list of assignments and the logged in student’s grades.  The button to toggle this feature into view is located at the top of the page directly below the course title.  The site admin must turn this feature on, set the button text, and the individual course must be set to allow students to see grades.
  • My Courses Slider - Displays a list of user courses in a responsive slider.
  • Personalized Recommended Courses - Uses course tags(Must use Tag Block and tag the course) and profile tags (Profile Interests).  Matching courses are displayed for the user in a responsive slider. 



Special Thanks

Pioneer would not be possible in it's current form without help and code from the following:

  • Richard Oelmann for coding the Header Image functionality and Course Grades display.  Richard is also the mastermind behind the course grade radial display and course completion radial display.  He is also the developer of the Flexibase Theme.
  • Mary Evans designer of More Candy theme and support in the Moodle.org theme forum
  • Eguru Theme with Featured Courses functionality
  • Gareth Barnard for support and ideas in the Moodle theme forum
  • Troy Patterson and Anupam Chugh for design and implementation support

Pioneer | explore tutorials

 
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Screenshots

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Contributors

Chris Kenniburg (Lead maintainer)
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Comments

  • Chris Kenniburg
    Tue, 8 Dec 2015, 11:14 AM
    I posted asking for help in the forums on using the show gradebook course setting. I will try to figure it out but it seems over my head. Maybe someone else will help out on this one. https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=324408
  • Michelle Lomman
    Tue, 8 Dec 2015, 11:23 AM
    Hi Chris re the 'my courses' scrollling, maybe check out the essentials theme as that seems to have the scrolling working.
  • Chris Kenniburg
    Tue, 8 Dec 2015, 11:41 AM
    Ok. Will do. I might try making two columns for the list but I will see how essential handles this issue too.
  • Chris Kenniburg
    Tue, 8 Dec 2015, 12:08 PM
    I think if I set a height for the menu and set overflow to scroll, that might be a simple fix. I got some ideas to try.
  • Michelle Lomman
    Tue, 8 Dec 2015, 12:38 PM
    Ok cool cos I wouldn't recommend two columns as course names are often quite lengthy.
    I know you'll solve it smile
  • Chris Kenniburg
    Tue, 8 Dec 2015, 8:41 PM
    OK Michelle, you get two of your wishes for the next release of Pioneer - Centered Featured Courses & My Courses Drop Down scroll for long lists. I need to do some testing and then will push out the new release later today or tomorrow. Thank you for the feedback and great suggestions. I hope you enjoy this theme as much as I do creating it.
  • Chris Kenniburg
    Tue, 8 Dec 2015, 10:19 PM
    In other news I am now adding in a "This Course" drop down menu which shows all the activities of the course. I also changed up the My Courses drop down to reflect the order and display settings from the My Courses Block in the Dashboard. This is very much like BCU, Essential, and others. It is really looking good! Next up is to freshen up the breadcrumbs before pushing out the 1.2.8 version of Pioneer.
  • Michelle Lomman
    Wed, 9 Dec 2015, 3:20 AM
    Hi Chris, with the 'this course' feature there are two considerations...it is ideal to have this as a feature that can be turned on or off and secondly in the essential theme there is a bug where the 'grades' link within the 'this course' is still displayed to students even if the grades feature has been hidden from them and therefore it throws an error when they click on it, which is definitely problematic. Nothing like a good challenge lol.
  • Chris Kenniburg
    Wed, 9 Dec 2015, 3:28 AM
    Michelle, There is a toggle checkbox for turning on or off under General Settings > Course Activity Menu. It is in with the My Courses drop down area of the page. I will remove the gradebook link option in the next release since we already have the gradebook slider feature.
  • Chris Kenniburg
    Wed, 9 Dec 2015, 3:33 AM
    Michelle, I have removed the gradebook link from the "This Course" menu. It will be in the 1.2.9 release. However, if you have access to your server you can remove these lines. https://github.com/kennibc/moodle-theme_pioneer/blob/master/renderers/core_renderer.php#L119-L122
  • Michelle Lomman
    Wed, 9 Dec 2015, 3:43 AM
    Ok cool. Once again it would be ideal to have options for controlling the breadcrumbs. Most of our users struggle with the one in Essential. I've been tweaking settings in your theme so that categories aren't displayed which cleans up the breadcrumbs nicely. It would however be good to be able to easily select the background colour for the bar the breadcrumbs appears in.
  • Chris Kenniburg
    Wed, 9 Dec 2015, 4:04 AM
    Pioneer 1.2.9 will also have a background color picker for the breadcrumb bar. I just added it in. You are just full of good ideas! Thanks again for using Pioneer. Please keep the ideas coming.
  • Just wondering . . .
    Wed, 9 Dec 2015, 4:05 AM
    Michelle, is this hacking the theme files or tweaking the CSS?
    I'd be interested if it was CSS tweaking.

    -Derek
  • Michelle Lomman
    Wed, 9 Dec 2015, 4:12 AM
    Hi Derek, I avoid hacking or CSS wherever possible to ensure a stable environment that is transparent to other admins if required smile
    Hi Chris, thanks so much, it is a great theme, I'm enjoying challenging it and getting the most out of it. Keep up the great work.
  • Just wondering . . .
    Wed, 9 Dec 2015, 4:18 AM
    So Michelle, can we have a look at your tweaks to the breadcrumbs? I've often thought I'd like to make them consistent.

    -Derek
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