A course format refers to the layout of a course. You may choose the course format in "Course Management" > "Course Settings" > "Edit course settings".
Collapsible Topics
This format offers a simple collapsing and expanding function for topics using a toggle. The toggle is in place to decrease the amount of information presented to your students at the beginning of a course. The functionality makes sure that students are not bombarded with an overload of content. It is beneficial to clean up and declutter some courses by hiding content sections when not needed. This course format is perfect for a course that has numerous sections with a lot of content. Students can now collapse and expand sections according to their needs, using the toggles.
Collapsible Topics (Customizable)
Similar to Collapsible Topics, this format expands and collapses the information presented to students in the course. The significant difference with this course format is that there are many optional settings to change the way the collapsed topics appear to users. Looking for the same functionality as Collapsible Topics but want to customize the page a little more, consider this format.
Folder View Format
The Folder View course format displays activities and resources within a folder that is expandable or collapsible. In addition, this course format can display all folders on a page or a single folder with previous and next topic navigations or a jump-to menu, which allows the student to navigate between folders easily.
Single Activity Format
The Single Activity Format only has 1 section and allows the teacher to add one activity only to the course. When the single activity format is selected, a drop-down menu appears for the teacher to choose the activity they wish to use.
Social Format
This format is oriented around one main forum, which appears listed on the main page. It is helpful for situations that are more free form. They may not even be courses.
Topics Format
The course is organized into topic sections that a teacher can give titles to. Each topic section consists of activities, resources, and labels. In new installations of Moodle, this is the default format. Topics Format is great to use if a course is objective-based and each objective may take different amounts of time to complete.
Weekly Format
This course format is organized week by week, with each section having a date heading. You can add content, forums, quizzes, and so on in the section for each week. The current week is highlighted. If the instructor wants students to work on the same materials simultaneously, this would be a suitable format to choose.
Please note: Make sure the course start date is correct. If it is not, the weeks will have the wrong date on them. This is especially important if a course is being imported in to use with a new section of students.