Using Topics

MLC courses use collapsed topics by default. These topics can be used to organize course content, help students locate assignments, and efficiently hide and show groups of content to students.

Tips for Using Topics

• Topics can be thought of like file folders. Each topic can contain a variety of activities and resources.
• Topics can be used to organize a course in numerous ways, depending on the type of course and instructor preference.
  • By week - each week of the course gets one topic containing the information and activities needed for the week.
  • By unit/chapter/lesson
  • By content type
• Showing/hiding a topic also shows/hides all the content within that topic in the student view.
• New courses have a default number of topics added automatically. Topics can be added or deleted to fit the course content.
• If content is imported from a previous course, topics can be imported as well.

Working with Topics

Editing Topic Names

1. Enter your course and turn editing on.
2. Scroll to the topic you want to edit and either
   1. Click on the pencil at the end of the topic name, type the new topic name, and press enter.
   2. Click Edit at the end of the topic box and choose Edit section. Edit the section name and click Save changes.

Showing/Hiding Topics

1. Enter your course and turn editing on.
2. Click Edit at the and of the topic name.
3. Click either Hide section or Show section from the edit menu.
4. Hiding a section will remove both the topic and all the content in the topic from student view. To indicate this, the topic name will appear in italics and a Hidden from students message will appear under the title.

Highlighting Topics

1. Enter your course and turn editing on.
2. Click Edit at the and of the topic name.
3. Click either Highlight or Remove highlight.
4. When a topic is highlighted, a thin blue line appears to the left of the topic content.

Adding Topics

1. Enter your course and turn editing on.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the course page.
3. Click the blue + underneath the last topic currently in the course.
4. A new topic will appear at the bottom of the course. It will automatically be called Section # (whatever number comes next). Follow the additional directions on this page to edit the topic.

Deleting Topics

There are two options for deleting course topics.

Option 1

1. Enter your course and turn editing on.
2. Click the Edit menu next to the topic you want to delete.
3. Choose Delete section.
4. If prompted, click Delete on the confirmation screen.
5. Note that if a topic is deleted using this method, all activities and resources within the topic will also be deleted.

Option 2

1. Enter your course and turn editing on.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the course page.
3. Click the blue - underneath the last topic currently in the course.
4. The last topic in the list will be removed.
5. Note that if a topic is deleted using this method, all activities and resources within the topic will be tagged as orphaned and will not be visible to students. The content must be moved to an existing topic in order for students to see it.

Rearranging Topics

1. Enter your course and turn editing on.
2. After turning editing on, compass arrows will appear to the left of each topic.
3. Click the compass arrow next to the topic you wish to move and drag it to the proper location