Have course sections remember collapsed / expanded state

fieldstar

Although you can set the default state (collapsed or expanded) for sections on the edit course settings page, these defaults seem to be reapplied every time a user renters) a course, even if they have collapsed or expanded some sections last time they were in.

It would be better if the system remembered the collapsed / expanded status for each section each time user leaves the course main page and returns them to the last state when they return. (For info, the Moodle plugin 'format_topcoll' does do this).

Sarang Nair

@fieldstar said in Have course sections remember collapsed / expanded state:

format_topcoll

Hi @fieldstar

Thanks for your idea.

We will certainly look into this feature and if feasible we shall implement this feature in the upcoming updates of Edwiser Course format plugin.

Rajiv Sathian

We are planning to implement this feature as part of next update of Edwiser RemUI-Course Formats plugin.

In order to implement this feature we will use local storage to keep track of all sections.

This will be user end workflow:

User will set the course activities as collapsed (for example),
User can see the section state (collapsed / expanded) even if s/he refresh the page.
Can see section state even if s/he left the page and come back to course page after some time.
Can see section state even if s/he logout from the system.
Note : Need to check time here.

Trade off:

The user if switches his/her browser or log into the site from another device then they won't see the course activities as per their preference.

Question: Do you think, we should track section state on the permanent basis. For example, user can see the same section state on different system and sessions?

fieldstar

This doesn't seem to describe the functionality I was expecting. The Moodle plugin 'format_topcoll' remembers the last state that the user left each topic in when they exited the course, in this way the user can have all topics collapsed and just have the topic they are working on expanded. When they log out and log back in this is then how the topics are presented once more.

I think the way you have describe it would mean that the user could actively choose the default status, i.e. all topics expanded or all topics collapsed, rather than the course passively remembering the state that the user left the course in last.

Rajiv Sathian

I guess you got me wrong.

In the solution that I suggested Admins will be setting the default state of the activities within a course and later when students explore the course whatever status they set the course activities it will be displayed accordingly.

So in a way it is actually working in the same concept that you had suggested just that we have provided admins an option to choose the default state for course activities.