Course format refers to the layout of the course. A course format on Moodle helps in changing the navigation and the layout option of your course . Only the Moodle Admin can enable, disable or delete the course formats. The admin can also change the order in which course formats are displayed to users in the course settings.
Course formats can be divided into two types. They are:
• Standard Course formats
• Contributed Course formats.
Under Standard Course formats the available options are:
• Weekly format
• Topics format
• Social format
• SCORM format
In this blog, I will be explaining you more about Topics formats and how to control them:
Topics format can be defined as the formats where the entire course is divided into topics that an administrator can give the titles to. Each topic section consists of labels, resources and activities.
Tips to control Topics format in Moodle :
• Topic format fits the best when your course is objective based and each objective consumes different time intervals in order to complete it.
• By making sure all the sections are clearly and accurately labelled, aligning with the units as listed in the e-learning project you can maximise the accessibility using topics format.
• By default in Moodle course, topics are given default titles as “Topic 1” for the titles that is running sequentially. Even you can change these topic names as per your requirement.
• Option to change the topics to “Show one section per page” format. Suppose if the course has eight topics, with the third one currently shown. You can see the links located on left and right leads to topics two and four in the image below.
Image Source :
Here in the above image, you can see the course home page showing just the section names and any text in the section description, with the names being clickable.
Some of the popular plugins for Topic formats are :
• Collapsed Topic
• Onetopic format
• eTask topic format
• oohoo Tabtopics format
• Masonry Topics format
• Menutopic format
• Topics format (Colours)
I will tell you how to add topics in Moodle :
Step 1
In the main page, under “Administration” Option click on “Site Administration” and select “Manage courses and categories” under “Courses” option.
Step 2
After you select “Manager Courses and categories” option click on “Create new course” option as shown in above image.
Step 3
Fill all the details in order to add a new course
Step 4
Click on “Course format” option in order to see more options on “Topics format”. Customize the Topic format as per your requirement and then click on “Save and return”.
Step 5
After you have saved the course, you will be able to see the screen as shown above, click on “Turn editing on” which is located on top right corner.
Step 6
Once you have turned editing on, click on “Add an activity or resource” option in order to upload SCORM package.
Step 7
After you have selected “Add an activity or resource” you will get a window as shown above, select “SCORM Package” option and click on “Add” option.
Step 8
Give the name, description and other details of your SCORM package.
Step 9
Once you have entered the SCORM package details, click on “Save and return to the course”.
Step 10
Once the SCORM package is uploaded, you can see it as shown in the image above, click on the “+” button in order to add one more topic (If required)
Step 11
Once you have clicked on “+” option, you can see a new topic (Topic 3) has been added to your course.
Step 12
Click on “Add an activity or resource” in order to upload SCORM activity for Topic 3.
Step 13
Select “SCORM package” in the options and click on “Add”.
Step 14
After you have selected “Add” option you will get the details to fill the details for SCORM package to Topic 3
Step 15
Upload the SCORM package in Topic 3 and click on “Save and return to the course” in order to complete uploading the package.
I hope with my blog you are able to understand how to use Topics in Moodle and how to upload them to your course. Still having doubts? Feel free to contact us at hello@playxlpro.com.
