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The Tiles course format provides users with graphical "tile' menu buttons for navigating to sections in a Moodle course.
How Tiles Format works
In this example, the first section "Getting Started" is highlighted as the current section in the Moodle course. The first two tiles use graphic images as button backgrounds, and the next two tiles use icons.
After clicking on a section's tile, the contents open onscreen as an overlay, and the other menu buttons are greyed-out:
The section content displays smoothly and quickly, without appearing to load a new page into the browser.
While a button's section is displayed, clicking on its button again will close the current section. Clicking on a different button will open that section. Clicking away from the menu closes the open section.
The layout changes when Editing is enabled
When edit mode is enabled, the course display looks a bit more like Collapsed Topics format.
(This is likely to ease the moving of content between sections during editing.)
Settings for Tiles Format
Overall Format Settings
Look in your course's main "Settings" page under "Course Format" to find settings for Tiles Format:
Here are details about the Tile format's settings:
- Tile icon: Pick a default icon to use on tiles.
- Colour for tiles: Select from a pre-made set of colours for the background under the icons.
- Use sub tiles for activities: Inside each section, you can use tiles to represent activities, instead of using the default Moodle "list" layout. (Disabled by default.)
- Use sub tiles in top section: Available if "Sub tiles in Activities" has been activated above. (Note: Using sub tiles in the top section may take up a lot of screen space, so this option is not usually ideal, and will be disabled by default.)
- Progress on each tile: Shows the user's activity completion progress for each tile. This is shown as a fraction, e.g. "2/10" would mean that 2 of the section's 10 activities have been completed by the user.
- Filter bar (Outcomes unavailable): ggggg
- Emphasise headings with coloured tab: If set to “yes”, whenever you format text in a Label (Text area) as a “Heading”, the heading will have a coloured tab to the left of it.
- Documentation: This course format is very well documented, with illustrated explanations specifically written for Instructors, for Students, and for Administrators.
There's also a demonstration site that shows you the format in action. This can give you a good idea of what to expect in a live Moodle course, before you activate it in your own.
Section-specific Settings
Inside each section, you can change tile settings for each section, using the "Set photo / icon" option in the section's [...] edit menu:
Clicking "Set photo/icon" shows you a sub-page for selecting a pre-made icon.
By default, the "Tile icons" tab is selected. Select from an array of pre-made icons for the tile:
To upload or select a graphic image as a background for the tile, select "Photo library":
Issues to watch out for
- The colour used for "Colour for tiles" should be dark enough that white text will be easily seen on it. eLSupport has already created default colours that should be legible for people with vision challenges, but if colour contrast remains an issue for a user, try adding the "Accessibility block" to your Moodle course so that users can adjust colour contrast for themselves.
- This course format depends upon JavaScript being activated in the user's browser. Usually, every browser has JavaScript enabled by default, but if the user has disabled JavaScript, the menu tiles probably won't display correctly.
Contact eLSupport if you have questions about which course format may be best for your needs.
Related Resources: