KB1349 - Using the OneTopic course format

The OneTopic course format has been used at VCC for years, in hundreds of courses each term. It's popular with Instructors who want to use a "tabbed" interface to organize many different topical sections inside their Moodle courses.

The version of the OneTopic course format that's compatible with Moodle 4.5 has included a number of changes:

• A new tab styles editor when editing each section.

• The ability to include a tab icon.

• New background options for each section.

How OneTopic works

This video demonstrates how OneTopic works and shows how to adjust the appearance of section tabs:

Editing styles in OneTopic 

Since being upgraded for Moodle 4.5, one of the most significant changes in the OneTopic format is how styles and colour customizations are set up. The OneTopic format now has a completely redesigned user interface for customizing tab colours and styles.

Changing your Tab colour and appearance

To change a tab's appearance settings, click on that tab to enter its section, and then click on the vertical "three dots" menu at the top of the section. 
In the menu, select "Edit Settings":

Some essential buttons for tab settings

On the Edit Settings page (seen below), here are some essential settings for Tab styles:

• "Section content background": This changes the background colour for all content in the current tab/section.
• "Tab Styles": Next to this, click on "Show/hide tab style options" to reveal all the tab's colour and style settings.
  (The images of tabs below the "Show/hide" button show you what the colour settings will look like before you press "Save". You can change any of these settings at any time.)
   

Tab Style: Settings and Suggestions in detail 

 Here are some tips for using colour in OneTopic tabs:

• Use colour constructively to help communicate with your learners, and as an aid for navigation. For example, you could colour similar topics using similar colours, or you could use colour to indicate similar kinds of activities. Use colour to make child sections match their parent sections. Those functional uses of colour can help users recognize and anticipate what to expect as they navigate through your course.
   
• Try to avoid using "Set Default" to give your all your tabs the same default colour. Use the default for this (which is the default white background of the theme).
   
• Don't set "Child Index"; it should left to its default setting to ensure the "index" tab colour matches the colour of its sibling sub-sections.
   
• Try to differentiate tab background colours by Hue AND Value, not just by Hue alone or Value alone.
  i.e. Hue means which colour (red, blue, yellow, etc.) Value means the brightness of a Hue, from almost black to almost white.
   
• Try to avoid using colours that may be strongly "socially encoded" with particular meanings. For example, bright red may indicate an alert or emergency situation or an irrevocable action. Avoid using it as a button background colour.
   
• Keep your tab background colours a bit pale, faint, or muted. They should be much lighter than the foreground text. (Accessibility standards require adequate contrast between background and foreground colours for users with vision challenges.)
   
• You may need to use some tab colours more than once. In OneTopic, colours are recorded as hexadecimal numbers (e.g. "#B4FDB4"). As you select your colours, you may want to record their colour numbers in a text file or spreadsheet, if you want to use them again.
   
• Use "Set Active" to paint the current tab in a different colour after it's been clicked, (e.g. when it is the "Active" section). You'll see that "Set Parent" will also adopt your setting immediately. If you set this, it must be set for each individual tab.
   
• Use "Set Parent" to paint your Parent tab with a different colour after it's been clicked. We recommend also setting "Set Child" with the same colour, so that the parent and child sections will seem related.
   
• Known issue: "Set Highlighted" does not appear to work: By default, it's supposed to render the text of the current Tab in Bold (as the Settings interface indicates) but it does not do anything. This issue is being investigated.

Choosing Icons for Tabs

Iconography can be helpful in differentiating tabs, but it's important to know what your audience will expect and recognize in terms of symbols and icons. Some symbols are universally understood, and others may not be. Using icons constructively, logically, and consistently will work in your favour.

OneTopic has 650 icons to choose from! It seems like an excessive amount of choice, so it's probably best to use icons sparingly, for only the most important cases where a symbol will really help the learner to recognize when a tab is significant or exceptional.

Font and Border Options

You cannot change the actual typeface used in tabs, but OneTopic does give you the option of changing the size and weight of the typeface, and the colour of the borders and colour of the text inside your tabs. It's advisable to stay with the default settings, but if you must customize them, restraint and logic are always recommended.

Known Issues with the OneTopic format

No sub-menu items allowed for Section 0 (aka "General"):
If you set your OneTopic format to put the Section 0 ("General") section into its own tab, you may not be able to create sub-sections under it.

Changing course formats will reset your OneTopic tab colours and styles:
Changing to a different Course Format and then back to OneTopic will reset your tab colour settings to the default values.  You will have to manually add your colour changes again. (This issue has not changed from earlier versions of Onetopic.)

"Set Highlighted" does not appear to work:
By default, this setting is supposed to render the text of the current Tab in Bold (as the Settings interface indicates to you) but it does not do anything. This issue is being investigated.

Searching for content is difficult in OneTopic:
Searching for specific resources or activities by name (e.g. using Ctrl-F) is difficult. In Collapsed Topics, it's easy to click "Expand All" and hit Ctrl-F to find some content by its name, but in OneTopic there's no "Expand All" option, so there's no way to see all course content at one time.

Related Resources:

• Configuration of the course format OneTopic (Bambuco)