1 minute 44 seconds to cure the scroll-of-death?

This video by Jen Clevette of PWSD Educational Technology may have been around for a while but I have only just stumbled upon it. It is really clear, concise (only 1 minute 44 seconds) and covers a topic close to all our hearts – making the Wattle course page appear shorter and less cluttered… in other words curing the scroll-of-death.

The following images show my personal sandpit. It has piles of testing stuff in it and to see the whole thing I need to scroll down several times. This course is suffering from the scroll-of-death.

For the above my course Settings has Format set at Topics Format.

By changing Format to Collapsed Topics and saving the change my course now appears as below. (If you access the help for Format, Collapsed Topics does not appear. Not at all helpful!)

You’ll notice Topic Zero remains open but all the other topics have collapsed up to one line each. The content which used to be in the topics is still there, it is just hidden from view. Click on the Topic title or on the + sign on the right to open the topic, as I have done to Topic 2, shown below.

The video mentioned at the start of this post takes you this far.

If you find that you have no text headings against your topics, like my topics 5, 8 and 9 above, you will need to add them yourself. The images below use a different sandpit of mine and show how to change an existing text heading, but the same process applies when adding a new text heading.

Turn editing on, open the first topic, either by clicking the + or by clicking on the topic heading (which could be blank) and click on the edit icon to edit the course summary as shown below.

Uncheck the ‘use default section name’ and then enter a suitable ‘Section name’ and save the changes.

And that’s it.

Even if you need to set up the text headings for all your course topics you may find it makes your Wattle course more easily accessible for students and lecturers alike.  

One more thing…

If you apply this change to the format of your course during the teaching period, I suggest adding a note at the top of Topic zero telling people how to find their ‘lost’ or 'hidden' content. Something clear and easy to find at the very top of Topic zero, like…

Click on Topic headings to open and find content and activities.
Use the Class Discussion forum to comment on the new layout.