Course Formats

Weekly Format

Courses may be configured with a specific number of weeks. If weeks are used, then Moodle creates a header that auto-calculates the weeks based on the course start date.

By default, all courses are created with 18 weeks, as a semester generally has 18 weeks of study.

If in the School configuration, the school decides to run classes with more or less weeks, then the default setting should be changes by the admins.  This would also mean all the default courses will need to be manually updated, with the number of topics changes, and activities condensed or expanded to fill the number of weeks the school has chosen. see: weeks-in-a-term

Changing the number of weeks is easily done in the course settings page.  The weekly format should be used for most courses fourth grade on up.  Grouping the effort in weeks helps students stay on track.

Topic Format

Topic format is used for short courses or "band-aid" courses that address a specific skill deficit. Topic courses can be used for condensed content that spans a term or part of a term.  Topic courses are also great for younger grades, as the format is simple and more juvenile.

Any number of topics may be chosen. Topic section titles are defaulted to Topic 1, 2, etc, and they may be edited.

When using course reuse function, which pulls in content from another course, the topics in both courses are automatically mapped. This can be very confusing to sort out.  see course-reuse

Topic courses are not affected by school configuration changes since there is not calendar element to the course.

Trail Format

Trail format shows the student a graphical pathway to the end of the course and is suitable for younger learners.  Trail format allows the user to upload a picture for each section.  The format does not however keep track of where the student is along the trail.