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This Moodle course format organises course content into sections which can be nested inside each other. This format offers you a high degree of flexibility for your course layout.
How to use Flexible Sections format
Please note that, in this article, the terms Topic and Section are interchangeable.
In the sample image below, the Moodle Resources for Faculty (MR4F) shell has been set up (as of Feb 6, 2024) using the Felexible Sections course format. The image shows the Forums section, with 3 subsections (General, Specialty, and Hidden). The subsections are slightly indented to the right, indicating that they are subsections of the Forums section. Each of these sections and subsections can be expanded and collapsed as needed.
The MR4F course format settings are set as shown in the following image:
The setting, Show top section title, determines if the content preceding Topic/Section 1 (sometimes referred to as "Topic zero") is collapsible or not. For MR4F, we have chosen to leave it as uncollapsable. If it were set to collapse, the topic title would be General, by default, but can be edited.
The setting, Accordion effect determines if more than one section can be expanded at the same time, or if when expanding a section all other sections collapse.
The setting, Display course index has been set to Sections and activities to make it easier to drill down to a specific activity. This is shown on the left side of the following image. Alternatively, the Only sections option which is shown in the right side of the following image allows the user to go directly to a specific section. In a way, this is similar to the TABS of the OneTopic format, except the location is to the left in a collapsible drawer rather than taking up valuable space at the top of the course page.
The Display back link in activities option places a link back to the main course page in each of the activities as shown here in one of the course forums.
For additional information on the Flexible Sections course format, see the latest documentation provided by Moodle.org (opens in new tab).