Yeah, I was thinking about this too. Did you do anything special to keep that one topic findable/visible? Any ideas? My current ideas are
Idea #1: Structure the course home topic as a checklist. Use the Discourse-reply-template-component so students can create their own checklist. Teach them to bookmark or assign that topic to themselves so they can more easily find it. In this way their personal course topic can also serve as a learning journal where they reply with reflections, etc.
Idea #2: Add a link to the course home topic in the category description and use one of the many category banner theme components, like Category Banners 📜 - Themes - Pavilion, to make it easy to click on the course home topic. This is missing the checklist component but has the benefit of making it easy to update the course home and have it be reflected for everyone. This topic can also serve as an announcements thread.
Idea #3: Create a course home topic and then use a sidebar component like Discourse Category Sidebars or code something up via Custom Layouts Plugin but what about if someone is accessing the course on mobile? None of these sidebar components seem to make it easy for them to be viewed on mobile.
This is helping me think through the functions I think courses could need.
- Easy to find Course Home
- Checklist
- Announcements
- Course Updates
- Personal Learning Journals