Product Release

Course Format Release V1.0.0

LMS

Workplace

Released in Q3 2025

We are incredibly pleased to present to you this first version of the Titus course format.

The Titus course format is a modern, accessible, and fully responsive Moodle format designed to deliver an enhanced, image-focused learning experience. It presents courses, topics, sub-topics, and activities as visually rich tiles with customisable images, custom labels, progress bars, and metadata such as estimated duration and completion criteria. Course-level settings allow for a course subtitle, summary, default tile images, and extensive colour customisation, including progress bars and custom tile labels.

The flexible design ensures content is both engaging and easy to navigate, improving learner accessibility and providing educators with powerful tools to visually structure courses for maximum impact.

Supported on version(s):

  • Moodle LMS & Workplace 4.5

A note from Edd Clementson, Product lead at Titus

Our Titus theme has worked on enhancing various areas of core Moodle, and introduced new areas such as the learning library.

We’ve been able to take development one step further with the creation of this new course format. We’ve taken into consideration alot of feedback from customers over the years in terms of pain points and key features; and I’m confident this first version targets alot of issues experienced wit other course formats.

Flexibility is super important for any products we deliver, and this is reflected in the course level, topics level and activity level settings we’ve introduced. This also works with the new Moodle feature of sub-topics, providing an extra lever of navigation to help structure courses.

We’re also introducing responsive custom shortcuts on the course home page, enabling quick access to key resources with configurable titles, icons, descriptions, and links. Topics and activities support detailed visual presentation, including custom images, clear ‘Done’ highlights, visibility labels, activity dates & the ability to display estimated duration of activities.

We hope you enjoy this new plugin and welcome any feedback, comments and questions!

With thanks to the team who worked on this release:

Edd Clementson, Product Lead

Vagelis Simitis, Developer 

Kristian Burgess, UX Designer

Key Features

New image focussed course format

The new course format is accessible, mobile friendly and grants editing users control over the imagery used for topics, sub-topics and activities.

We’ve introduced an array of options to provide course editors with opportunities to maintain brand alignment across courses. New features include custom shortcuts, clearer course progress and estimated activity & topic durations.

Upload images to topic and activity tiles

Introducing the ability for editors to upload images to topic/subtopic and activity tiles. Keep courses on brand or use context specific imagery to keep learners engaged navigating through the course. 

Add a sub-title & summary to the course home page

Welcome users to the course, provide a thought provoking phrase or quote, or simply introduce the learning objectives of the course! Create a course subtitle and summary to be introduced to learners as they visit the course home page.

Create custom course home shortcuts

Provide learners with up to 8 custom shortcuts on the course home page. Edit the icons, titles, descriptions and links/files and even the mouse on hover colour to provide flexibility between courses. Additionally, upload files directly to the setting, so users can quickly view key information or download important files.

New course-level display settings for topic and activity tiles

A variety of course level settings have been created to provide flexibility and control over your course. Enable or disable a variety of options to be displayed on topics and activity tiles such as activity description, activity type or even the estimated duration.

Set estimated duration on activities & present on activity and topic tiles

Introducing the ability to define expected duration against activities that consequently can be shown on activity tiles. It doesn’t stop there… sub topics and topic tiles will automatically calculate the sum of activities within to display the total topic duration on the course home page.

Option to enable tile images & titles for concise tiles

Wanting more concise/shorter tiles? Enabling ‘image and link titles’ will remove the ‘View topic’ and ‘View activity’ buttons from tiles and instead allow users to click the tile image and title to be taken into the topic or activity.

Ability to define custom labels for topic & activity tiles

Highlight important topics or activities using custom labels. Opportunity galore, highlight key assessment areas, case studies, reflection areas or any valuable distinction right on your tiles. Editors can define up to 10 custom labels in the course settings, including text, background colour and font colour.

Introducing new topic level settings

Customise each topic/sub-topic tile by uploading your own image and choosing tile specific display settings such as adding custom labels, displaying the sum of activity durations and more!

Introducing new activity level settings

Customise each activity tile by uploading your own image, choosing tile specific display settings such as adding custom labels or enter the estimated duration for more clarity on time expectations for learners.

Improved completion and restriction indicators

Clear, visible indicators for learners when all activities tracking completion have been completed within a topic. Similarly any restrictions in place are highlighted on tiles allowing users to view the criteria.

Feature List

 

Course level settings & features

  • Ability to enter a course home subtitle.
  • Ability to enter a course home summary.
  • Ability to upload a default section tile image.
  • Ability to choose the Tile image position.
  • Option to display activity description on activity tiles.
  • Option to display activity metadata on activity tiles.
  • Option to display activity type on activity tiles.
  • Option to display estimated duration on topic & activity tiles.
  • Option to display completion criteria on activity tiles.
  • Option to select the tile description line limits.
  • Colour picker for progress bars & ‘Done’ topic & activity label background colour.
  • Introduced ‘back to course home’ (replacing name of course) in breadcrumb trail when inside a topic/activity.
  • Option to enable using tile images and titles as links – removing the ‘View topic’ button on sections/sub-sections.

 

Shortcuts

  • Option to enable responsive custom course home shortcuts (1-8)
  • Colour picker for shortcut on hover background colour
  • Colour picker for shortcut on hover text colour
  • Ability to define shortcut title
  • Option to choose shortcut icon
  • Ability to define shortcut description
  • Ability to define shortcut link
  • Ability to upload a file to a shortcut
  • Ability to define shortcut target

 

Custom labels

  • Ability to define up to 10 custom labels to be applied to topic/sub-topic or activity tiles.
  • Ability to define label text
  • Ability to define label background colour
  • Ability to define label text colour

Topics / Sub-topics

Topics are presented in a tile based format allowing editing users to upload images for each topic and sub-topic. Features include:

  • Displaying a custom topic image.
  • Displaying a custom label on each topic.
  • Displaying a progress bar with a clear ‘Done’ highlight upon completion of activities within.
  • Displaying the topic title.
  • Displaying the topic description.
  • Displaying the number of activities within the topic.
  • Displaying the sum of the estimated duration of the activities within.
  • Displaying clear ‘Hidden’ and ‘Restricted’ labels to reflect appropriate visibility and permissions of the topic.

 

Topic level settings:

  • Ability to upload a topic image.
  • Option to toggle the display of the topic description on the tile.
  • Option to select the custom label to be displayed for each topic.
  • Option to toggle the display of the number of activities in that topic.
  • Option to display a sum of the estimated duration of activities and sub-topics within.

Activities

Activities are also presented in a tile based format allowing editing users to upload images for each activity, or rely on the default Moodle icon and colour chosen in the Titus Moodle theme. Features include:

  • Displaying a custom activity image.
  • Displaying a custom label on each activity.
  • Displaying a clear ‘Done’ highlight upon completion of the activity.
  • Displaying the activity title.
  • Displaying the activity description.
  • Displaying activity dates where applicable (e.g. open/close/due dates).
  • Displaying the activity type.
  • Displaying the estimated duration of the activity.
  • Displaying the completion criteria defined for each activity. When more than 1 completion criteria is set, if partial completion is achieved, ‘To do’ will now change to display ‘In progress’.
  • Displaying clear ‘Hidden’ and ‘Restricted’ labels to reflect appropriate visibility and permissions of the activity.
  • Displaying a clear ‘View activity’ link for each activity.
  • Using the ‘Text and Media area’ within the topic pages to provide flexibility on headings and supporting imagery between activities and sections.
  • Displaying ‘Stealth’ on an activity tile if an activity is ‘hidden from course page but available’.

 

 

Activity level settings:

  • Ability to upload an image for each activity tile.
  • Ability to define the estimated duration of an activity (numerical value and time domain dropdown – minutes/hours/days/weeks).
  • Option to select the custom label to be displayed for each activity.

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