#29 - Organise your Moodle Module Space into chronological order
- Many modules are designed to work in a straightforward chronological order.
- Students often like a sense of progress in learning, and a clear idea of how learning activities build towards the goal.
- Don't over-complicate your Moodle Module Space, go for the simplest possible design.
Enhancement goals addressed: Simplified learning design | Efficient learning management
Tools and how to get support: Moodle Module Space
Solution overview
This is the classic way of organising resources in Moodle. Create a section for each week (or other chronological subdivision). Add files, activities, web pages etc. as appropriate for each week of the module. If you create a Talis Aspire reading list with matching sections, you can display each section in the appropriate weekly section in Moodle. You can allow the students to access all of the material from the start, or release material as the module progresses. You might also create a set of "resource pots" into which you put resources that will be used across the whole module. Or you might take a completely different approach, with only thematically organised sections and no chronological order.
Process
- First of all decide how best to divide up the weeks that you have available - for example, 10 weeks each with its own section, or a series of phases, each divided up into weeks.
- Create the sections that you need, but don't yet add the pages to them. To create a section, switch editing on, and then look for the Add Section link near to the bottom of the page.
- There is a way to ensure consistency across each of the sections. If each section is going to have approximately the same structure, you can create a section to use as a template, and add in its contents. Unfortunately, you cannot duplicate a whole section, but you can duplicate individual pages within that template section, and then drag them into the new section that you are working on. If you have template content on the pages, that content will also be duplicated.