Course sections

Sections are the groups the course outline is built from. They are defined on the course, and every lesson is assigned to one.

Where

Course settings → Sections. It is a repeating list; each entry has one field, Section name.

Create them

1. Open the course.
2. Open Course settings → Sections.
3. Add a section and name it.
4. Repeat for each section, in the order students will work through them.
5. Update the course.

Create the sections before the lessons: a lesson's section selector is built from the sections of the course it is attached to.

What students see

The course sidebar renders the sections as an accordion — one panel per section, numbered, with the lessons inside it. Each lesson row shows its title, its estimated time and a completion checkbox.

The panel containing the lesson a student is currently reading opens automatically, so a student always sees where they are.

Naming sections

The section names are the table of contents. Write them for a student:

Do not number them yourself — the outline numbers them for you, and hand-numbered names go wrong the moment a section is inserted.

How many

Three to six for most courses.

• One section — the accordion adds nothing; consider whether the course needs sections at all.
• More than eight — students scroll past them rather than reading them.

Aim for sections of three to eight lessons.

Reordering

The order of the list is the order of the outline. Rearranging the list rearranges the accordion.

Reordering sections does not reorder lessons: a lesson's position within its section comes from its own order attribute.

Deleting a section

This is the one destructive operation here. Lessons assigned to a deleted section are left pointing at a section that no longer exists, and they disappear from the outline — while remaining published, reachable by URL, and counted in the completion percentage.

Before deleting:

1. Open the lesson list and note which lessons show that section.
2. Reassign them.
3. Then delete the section.

Afterwards, check the lesson list's Section column for dashes.

Renaming a section

Safe. Renaming changes the outline heading and nothing else; lessons stay assigned.

Sections are per course

Each course has its own list. Two courses with a section called Introduction have two unrelated sections, and a lesson cannot be assigned to a section of a course it is not attached to.

Verify

1. Save the sections and open the course.
2. Confirm the accordion shows every section, in order.
3. Confirm each section contains the lessons you expect.
4. Confirm no section is empty — an empty panel reads as missing content.
5. Open a lesson and confirm its section opens automatically in the outline.