Subsections
In Moodle 4.5, ‘Sub sections’ were added to the core functionality in MDL-81765. In this post I’ll give an overview and examine why they’re not quite a complete implemented solution.
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What is a section?
It might seem to be a strange question, but there is relevance here. A section is a container that you attribute a name to that contains zero or more modules. Modules can be activities or resources. The initial number of sections is defined when the course is created. There is additionally a ‘maxsections’ setting that is set by the administrator – though its strange that its name is not as yet stated in the documents. Essentially a Section is a way of grouping learning materials together that share the same concepts within a course that has one or more concepts. Sections can also be called ‘Topics’ or ‘Weeks’. The name and understanding of the name is different, but still a ‘container’.
What is a sub section?
A sub section is essentially a section within a section. It is a means of breaking down a concept in to one or more smaller concepts whilst still retaining the ability to describe the concept as a whole. A means of you, the educator, bringing clarity and structure for your learners.
I don’t want to repeat what has already been produced, so if we look at ‘Add a subsecion‘ then we can understand how to create and delete a subsection. That is if your Administrator has enabled them – being ‘mod_subsection’.
Not quite finished
This is all well and good, but there is a problem! In attempting to provide support in my Collapsed Topics and Grid formats, I discovered that I kept hitting a brick wall in that the functionality relies on the user being able to change the number of sections after a course has been created not by the course setting ‘numsections’ as has been done in the past but by adding and removing sections on the course page. The ‘brick wall’ is technically complex to describe and will detract from this post, but it all hinges on two elements ‘maxsections’ and counting the number of sections / updated ‘numsections’ value when making decisions. I raised ‘Subsections are not removed from the ‘course_sections’ table when deleted causing maxsections bounds’ failure’ and found ‘The new add subsection dropdown does not respect the max sections setting’. Thus there is not currently a clear understanding if a sub section should be considered to be restricted by ‘maxsections’ or not. Thus restricting the learner if they reach it and can no longer structure the course in the way that they want to. That an Administrator / management decision may have set this value with a certain understanding but not appreciated its impact. So I’ve posted ‘Are subsections really sections?’ to ask for community feedback.
Questions to be answered
Therefore should sub sections be judged to be full sections and thus bound by the maximum number of sections on a course? That when we create a course we only specify the number of full sections and not then the number of sub sections we want in each one? Thus should there actually be a separate ‘maxsubsections’ setting?
What is the preferred way of changing the number of sections once a course has been created? I’ve stuck to ‘numsections’ course setting because it allows you to quickly add and remove lots of sections. I’ve done this because of feedback. But perhaps its time to move on and remove that setting and avoid the possibility of orphaned sections. Therefore have the ‘numsections’ course setting or not?
Should we do away with restricting the number of sections once a course has been created? Does ‘maxsections’ restrict educator capability or simply put a restriction to prevent human error?
Conclusion
How you interact with your learning platform should be up to you to fulfil your needs in that tool for your learning. With sub sections, what are your needs and are they being fulfilled? Thoughts please? Do also comment on the Moodle forums and specific tracker issues.
- Subsections – 16th January 2025
- NAS – 16th December 2024
- Debugging SCSS – 16th November 2024
Interesting.
I’ve never felt the need to use sub-sections.
But reading this post and thinking about it, I can see potential.
For example in a course about IT, I might have the main content, and then optional parts for Windows users, Mac users, and Linux users.
99% of students will only want to read one of these – but it’s good (for me as the course designer) to keep them together.
In this situation 3 subsections, two of which the student won’t look at, seems sensible.
However, I don’t have the experience using sub-sections to have a useful opinion here, relating to how sub-sections are implemented – but hopefully others who do use sub-sections can give som input 🙂