9 Best Course Formats for Better Course Presentation (Layout) in Moodle™

This article is all about finding the right course format for your Moodle™ course!

Because nobody needs a boring, dull-looking course!

Also, it isn’t a secret that a complex course layout and confusing navigation can be a huge turn-off for your learners.

So, let’s start!

List of 9 Best Course Formats in Moodle™

#1 Edwiser Course Formats 

Edwiser Course Formats is a capable solution for enhancing the presentation of your course. It gives a minimalistic look that simplifies and transforms your Moodle course aesthetically. It also improves the content of your courses making them effective, engaging, and simple, just how learning should be. 

It not only simplifies the course layout but also improves the overall course navigation making the courses easy to find for your students.

The plugin comes in two smart formats:

• Edwiser List Format

Picture credit: Edwiser.org

This is one of the simplest yet highly functional layouts for Moodle. With this format, you can display your course content in the form of collapsible lists with just a click!

It also comes with an option to display individual photos of course teachers on the course page.

This plugin reduces your time & effort put into intense scrolling to reach a particular section on a course page.

• Edwiser Card Format

Picture credit: Edwiser.org

Edwiser Card Format is a stylish and robust course format, It allows your students to view sections & activities on ‘Cards’. This gives a sleek and stylish look & feel for your Moodle courses.  

It has a visually pleasing interface that only ensures maximum levels of student engagement. Edwiser Card Format also makes sure that learners can track their progress of the activity.

Activity icons on the cards are displayed on the single section page itself. This makes your students aware of the activity, which eventually helps them learn quicker!

And the best part? You get these amazing duos for free!

#2 Grid Format 

Picture credit: moodle.org

The Grid Format is a modular and visual course format that makes finding a topic a lot easier for your learners.

This course format perfectly caches all topics and creates a grid of icons for each topic with short titles. If you click on an icon it automatically brings up the content from the particular topic. It is specially created and based on a topic that uses a grid to select certain images when you click on them, they pop up a ‘lightbox’ display of the Topic section. It ensures easy navigation between Sections.

#3 Collapsed Topics 

Picture credit: moodle.org

One of the weariest issues that can disturb a student’s learning experience is the “Scroll of Death”. It refers to endless scrolling through the entire course contents page! How exhausting that would be?!

Collapsed Topics is another format that kills the issue of “Scroll of Death”.

This plugin allows you to collapse and expand sections using the toggle. The toggle is located in the place to decrease the amount of information presented to your student at the beginning of a course.

The above functionality makes sure that your students aren’t bombarded with an overload of content. And it is extremely useful if you want to clean up and declutter some courses by hiding content sections when not needed.

This course format is most suitable if your course has numerous sections with a lot of content. Your learners can now collapse and expand sections according to their needs, using the inbuilt toggles.

#4 OneTopic 

Picture credit: moodle.org

OneTopic comes with a tabbed display of your course content.

Each topic is displayed as a tab that appears at the top of your course. This course format makes navigating quick and easy by returning to the current tab, after going through the resources.

The tabs can also be customized with colors and CSS the way you like it to make them stand out for easy accessibility and visual aesthetics. You can also assign specific names to each tab, which helps to simplify the navigability of your course.

This format is located on the Moodle standard format: “Topics”.

#5 Flexible Sections Format 

Picture credit: moodle.org

Organizing your course content is a task and it takes a great amount of effort! 

Flexible Sections Format is a handy plugin that organizes course content in any number of sections that can be nested. Meaning, you can find your sections, topics and contents perfectly organized one under the other. 

So each section can be displayed expanded or collapsed instantly. 

If you hide a section all nested sections and activities are automatically hidden as well. 

#6 Tiles Format 

Picture credit: moodle.org

Tiles format is a wonderful and visually enhanced course format that can really make your Moodle courses stand out. 

This format displays course topics as “Tiles”, in a grid form rather than a long list. 

When you click on it, tile content is displayed under the tile with an interesting animated effect. The layout can adapt to your different screen sizes and orientations. 

In each tile, it allows you to assign activities and display as “sub-tiles”. 

You can pick an icon from a predefined set for each tile, or upload a photo as background.

#7 MindMap Format 

Picture credit: moodle.org

The MindMap Course Format is another great plugin that allows you to view your courses through an interactive, customized mindmap. In addition, it provides features that are unavailable in standard Moodle yet, which are: a graphical indicator of conditional dependencies (when two events get affected by a third event) and distinction of modules where your students may have problems. 

It can also work with other  Moodle course formats (like topics format or weekly format) and the courses that already exist can be instantly changed to a format of MindMap.

#8 NED – Tabs Course format

Picture credit: moodle.org

The Tabs Course Format assigns numbers to your sections and displays them in order as numbered tabs. So, you can get them organized and pick them easily.

You can use an unlimited number of tabs! You can also customize and change the color settings of the text, background, hover, etc; depending on your need.

#9 Board Course Format  

Picture credit: moodle.org

“Board (Grids and Blocks)” is a simple and effective course format!  Within your Moodle courses, you get full flexibility between sections and columns. 

You can also choose the quantity, width, and quantity of sections in each column. 

Understand that each “Group” is just a vertical column (not a row) and it’ll make your job much easier.

The Ideal Course Format for Moodle?

We suggest you choose a course format that can fulfill yours as well as your students’ needs. Because there isn’t a single winner!

To be fair, it all boils down to

==> the nature of your course

==> your learning objectives & methods

==> your ease of operating and managing Moodle

==> the needs or preferences of your students.

Summing Up

We hope this article helped you understand some of the best course formats in Moodle.

Looking to enhance your learning interface with quicker course navigation and intuitive course formats? Edwiser RemUI theme is your go-to option.

The best part is that the Edwiser Course Formats plugin is also a part of the theme package. 

Remember – An attractive, highly functional interface in Moodle and an intuitive course layout always go hand in hand.  So, to take your Moodle experience to the next level, explore Edwiser RemUI right away! 

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