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You're reading from Moodle Theme Development

Product typeBook

Published inDec 2016

Reading LevelIntermediate

Publisher

ISBN-139781786463210

Edition1st Edition

Languages

HTML

Tools

Moodle

Concepts

Learning Management System

Author (1)

Silvina Paola Hillar

Chapter 8. Exploring Layouts

Whenever we design a Moodle course, we have to bear in mind the target audience. That is the reason why there are so many themes available to download in order to align with the myriad goals or needs of the users. In this chapter, we will explore all the layouts available at the time of writing, and the different styles that we can apply to them in order to adjust the theme to our audience.

There are some themes that happen to be much more customizable than others; in other words, changing the skin, look, and feel, of our course is simpler in some themes than others. Therefore, in order to cater to our needs, we need to explore the themes and their profile in order to decide which one we shall customize our Moodle course with.

There are themes suitable for academic as well as corporate usage; we can change the look and feel in order to modify them a little bit and adapt them to the situation in which we will use them. Moreover, there are themes that are suitable...

Exploring themes suitable for academic use

There are several themes for Moodle 3.0 as well as for 3.1 for academic use at the time of writing, so we will explore them. We will focus on the themes available for Moodle versions 3.0 and 3.1, although there are plenty of other themes which work with earlier versions of Moodle. When talking about academic use, we mean that we can use them at different levels of education, as well as in institutes. There are condiments that we can add to the themes in order to adapt them to their location.

In order to explore Moodle themes, we need to go to the following website: https://moodle.org/plugins/browse.php?list=category&id=3 . On this website are all the themes that we can download for our Moodle on-premises for free; therefore, we will list and explore the ones for academic use.

Contemporary

This is a theme for academic as well as corporate use. It is available for Moodle 3.0 and for earlier Moodle on-premises versions. According to its description...

Exploring themes suitable for corporations, companies, and professionals

There are some themes that we listed in the previous section that are also suitable for entrepreneurs; therefore, we will just name them in order to keep on exploring more themes in this category. These are the themes that we have just explored that are suitable for entrepreneurs: Essential, Contemporary, Adaptable, and Sharp.

There are more themes that have not been explored yet, so let's explore them and widen the possibility of enhancing our Moodle courses

Rocket

Rocket is a professional, fixed-width theme that is customizable, so we can avoid our Moodle site looking so Moodley. It has plenty of features, such as setting up a logo and the custom menu, which are controlled in the settings. It is available for Moodle 3 as well as for earlier versions. It can be downloaded from https://moodle.org/plugins/pluginversions.php?plugin=theme_rocket , as shown in the following screenshot:

Shoehorn

Shoehorn is a clean and professional...

Exploring themes for personal use

We have already explored these themes earlier in this chapter because there are only two themes available at the time of writing. These themes are Dynamic and Sharp. In order to explore them a little bit more, we will show a screenshot of our Moodle course using Sharp.

Sharp

We explained this theme earlier in this chapter since it is also a theme that can be used for professional and academic use. Therefore, we can take a look at our Moodle course dressed in this theme. In order to change the theme of our Moodle course we need to follow the steps that were described earlier in this chapter, as well as the installation wizard. The Moodle on-premises course looks as shown in the following screenshot:

Exploring two-column themes

There are a few two-column themes, and we have already explored some of them. The Two-column themes are Adaptable and Sharp, which we've explored in the previous sections. In this section, we'll explore Elegance. When theming our Moodle on-premises course, we can choose between three-column or two-column themes. The themes that we have mentioned have two columns, among other features. We will pay special attention to Elegance because we have worked with the other two themes before.

Elegance

Elegance is a beautiful, two-column Moodle theme, which can be customized. The items that we can customize are icons, fonts, quick links, marketing spots, front page content, footer content, colors, user menu, and log in screen. We can download the Elegance theme from the following website: https://moodle.org/plugins/pluginversions.php?plugin=theme_elegance . It runs in Moodle 3.1 as well as in Moodle 3.0 and earlier Moodle versions. It is shown in the following screenshot...

Exploring website themes

There are two themes that are based on websites, and one of them has been explored already. The theme that we have been working with throughout the book is Essential, which is similar to a home page rather than a Moodle course, and that is the intention of the designer of this theme. The other theme that is similar to a website is Crisp. We will explore it in this section.

Crisp

Crisp has several characteristics that make it suitable for designing a more specialized and clean website. It offers a Lemmon Slider on the home page. We can upload a favicon and a logo. It has blog support, and course and forum pages are navigable from the home page. It has very interesting features that can make your Moodle course look like a perfect website. Crisp is available for Moodle 3 as well as for earlier versions. We can download it from https://moodle.org/plugins/pluginversions.php?plugin=theme_crisp , as shown in the following screenshot:

Exploring miscellaneous themes

There are several themes that can be used to change the look and feel of our Moodle course according to what we need; therefore, we will explore miscellaneous themes, which have several categories and might be interesting when designing a specific course. The themes are listed hereinafter, and there is a short description of each one.

Archaius

Archaius can be downloaded from the following website: https://moodle.org/plugins/theme_archaius . It has several options to customize, such as social icons, uploading a logo, and the background image, among others. We can also customize the color of the current block tab and the current item in the custom menu. There are other features that can be customized as well, including CSS and JavaScript in the footer. It is available for Moodle 3 and earlier Moodle versions.

Bootstrap

The Bootstrap theme does not have much of a description, but it says that it is based on the Bootstrap CSS framework, and it has minimal styling...

Comparing and contrasting all the themes

The following chart lists all the themes that we have been working with and that are available at the time of writing for Moodle 3.1 and Moodle 3. There are plenty that are also available for earlier versions. They are compared and contrasted so that we can choose the one that caters to our needs:

Test your knowledge

A. These themes can be used for corporations, professionals, and companies ...

...essential, Contemporary, Adaptable, Sharp, Shoeborn, and Rocket.
...essential, Contemporary, Adaptable, Snap, Shoelace, and Rocket.
...essential, Contemporary, Anomaly, Snap, Shoelace, and Rocket.

B. A child theme is a theme that ...

...inherits the functions and styles from anther parent theme.
...does not inherit the functions and styles from anther parent theme.
...does not work with Moodle.

C. Cerulean and Bootswatch are ...

...parent themes.
...child themes.
...not available at the moment of the writing.

D. Both Dynamic and Sharp are themes that can be used for ...

...academic and personal use.
...websites and personal use.
...professional and personal use.

E. All of the themes in the chapter are ...

...available free of charge at https://moodle.org/plugins/browse.php?list=category&id=3.
...paid and available at https://moodle.org/plugins/browse.php?list=category&id=3 .
...free of charge and...

Summary

In this chapter, we have dealt with all the themes available for Moodle 3.1 and Moodle 3, which are free of charge and downloadable at https://moodle.org/plugins/browse.php?list=category&id=3 . We have changed the look and feel of our Moodle course several times in order to show how it looks dressed in other themes. We will go on exploring more theme details in the following chapter.

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Author (1)

Silvina Paola Hillar

Silvina P. Hillar is Italian and has been teaching English since 1993. She has always had a great interest in teaching and has done a lot of research on teaching methodologies, management techniques and embed them into e-learning and teaching. She has also explored different types of e-learning combining them with Moodle. She also researches on multimedia assets that enhance teaching and learning through VLE platforms. She tries to embed the learning of students through new resources that are appealing and innovative for them. In this way, she ensures that multimedia stimulates different thinking skills as well as multiple types of intelligence. She is an English teacher, a Certified Legal Translator (English/Spanish), and has a postgraduate degree in Education (graduated with honors). She has worked at several schools and institutions with native English speaking students and students of English as a foreign language, and as an independent consultant for many international companies in the capacity of an Interpreter, Translator, and Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Course Designer. She has always had a passion for technological devices concerning education. Formerly, videos and cassettes were a must in her teaching lessons; the computer was, and still does, play a big role. Her brother, Gastón C. Hillar, designed some programs and games for her teaching. Lately, she has been teaching using Moodle and the Web. She believes that one of the most amazing challenges in education is bridging the gap between classic education and modern technologies. She has authored: Moodle 1.9: The English Teacher's Cookbook, Moodle 2.0 Multimedia Cookbook, Moodle 2.5 Multimedia Cookbook second edition, Mind Mapping with FreeMind and Moodle 2.3 Multimedia Video Course. When not tinkering with computers, she enjoys travelling with her son, Nico and her love, Jorge, with whom she spends wonderful time.
Read more about Silvina Paola Hillar

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Theme	Academic use	Corporations, companies, and professionals	Personal use	Two columns	Website	Miscellaneous
Essential		Yes			Yes (homepage)
Contemporary	Yes	Yes
Aadvark	Yes (modern student)
Academi	Yes (students)
Adaptable	Yes (university)	Yes (training companies)		Yes
Klass	Yes (e-learning)
Eguru	Yes (educational establishments)
Archaius						Several options to customize
Elegance				Yes
Pioneer	Yes (learning content)
Boostrap						CSS framework
Dynamic	Yes		Yes
Roshnilite						Customizable sections
Campus						Customizable
Eduhub ...