Title and Layout
This gives your lesson a title and sub-title which appear at the top of the page. You'll also decide what kinds of navigation to include with your lesson.
Lesson Title
The Lesson Title will be listed at the top of each page.
- In the Properties menu choose Style Properties
- In the Styles tab you chose an overall design for your Lesson.
- Now go to the Title & Layout tab
- Enter up a Lesson Title and Subtitle (1)
You can also customize the footer for each page.
Table of Contents Page
The TOC page is created by the program - you won't see it when you are editing.
Including a Table of Contents Page is optional. If used it will be the first page in the lesson. If you do not include this page, the TOC is still available when you choose the Rollover menu or the Dropdown menu.
- Check or uncheck the box marked "Table of Contents Page". (2)
This lesson does not have a TOC Page. Experiment with your lesson to decide if you want one. Softchalk can also be used for making single page activities, in which case you would not want a TOC Page.
You can include a navigation menu on each page. Choose only ONE of these settings.(3)
- Check "Rollover menu in a sidebar " for the Table of Contents (TOC) to appear as an active menu on the side of the page OR
- Check "Dropdown menu at top of page" for a similar menu to appear at the top of the page
"On This Page" Sidebar and Other Navigation
You can include an "On This Page" Sidebar which will list all the headings on a particular page. (4)
Unfortunately it does not distinguish between heading levels (that is sub-headings are not indented). You can only enable/disable this for the whole lesson. This Sidebar menu will not appear unless there are at least two headings on a page.
Headings are set by selecting some text and choosing the heading level from the dropdown box (or by choosing a heading level at the start of a new line).
The first choice on this dropdown box is "Plain Text". The heading levels are: Page Heading, Sub-heading 1, and Sub-heading 2. After typing a heading, the text style will return to "Plain Text" at the start of a new line.
- Remember to use Page Heading at the top of each page in order for that page to appear in the navigation.
This page has the Dropdown menu at the top and the "On This Page" Sidebar.
Other Navigation
These items don't take much space, so the default is to leave them enabled.
- Arrows add a link to Next and Previous on the top of the page. (5)
- Page numbers appear at the top and bottom of the page
If you want to force the student to go through the lesson sequentially then you must uncheck all the boxes listed under "Table of Contents" and also disable the Page numbers in the navigation. Remember that if you do this the student will not also not be able to go back and review parts of the lesson (except by navigating through the whole lesson again).
Recommendations:
- Use the Page Heading at the start of each page. This will put the Page Heading in the Table of Contents (TOC).
- Use Sub-Headings appropriately - they should be important enough to go in the TOC.
- You can include additional "headings" that won't appear in the TOC by formatting the text style (Bold) and color. Unfortunately these won't change automatically when you change the Style of the lesson.
