Hello,
I would like to search across all Moodle installations to find all courses on a specific subject/topic area.
How do I do this?
This approach is my preferred alternative to browsing installations by country.
Thank you for your help.
Robert
mmm I am not sure what it is you are asking here, your question is a little vague. Do you want to look for course material in Moodle courses? If that is what you are asking then you have a mis-perception of Moodle.
Moodle is a PHP based application into which you can put learning materials in a variety of formats, in a number of different ways, using a range of different methods to illicit responses from students. What you may want to think about is "how can I engage them into learning the things I want them to know?" Moodle gives you an opportunity to prepare content in an appealing manner then get your learners to regurgitate it, if that is your aim. Or, realizing there is a lot of resources on the Internet,, you can just ask questions and when your learners respond with learning from the resources they have found, you can then get them to present their learning is a number of ways.
Moodle is a tool that uses a constructivist pedagogy to facilitate a positive learning outcome, it is not a resource of lots of materials anyone can access. Resources are like icecream, tasty, easy to take, and they melt away in the heat of a hard stare. Moodle is not a refrigerator.
I am a newbie as well. and I utilize Moodle in this manner - as a Learning Management System.
I can build lessons, tests and quizzes and I can create forums and glossaries.
I can bring in resources or make my own resources and use them within the LMS.
I see Moodle as an LMS - that is - it is a tool to house my content.
But it's not a content generating tool, per se. That would be something like SoftChalk, which Moodle does work with.
Softchalk allows me to build lessons in which I've inserted activites into my lessons (interactive and some flash based).
There are some content (lessons) that Softchalk users have built and they are willing to share them - for you to use or to take and modify, then use. Google Softchalk & Connect.
But every Moodle user (and their content) is not 'linked' to every other, and therefore they are not 'searchable' as you are asking.
There is no general repository of Moodle courses or lessons that I know of, though like you I am still a newbie and may not know of them.
If you use Moodle 2.1 and have registered your site, please feel free to register at Mooch, that is the Moodle.org open community hub. Mooch has some courses in it and they are reviewed, so there may or may not be anything there that suits your need. Please realise though, there is a cost here, and that is it would be polite of you to offer something of your own for someone else to Mooch..
Hi Colin,
I had a look at the Mooch website and the home search page is something that I'd really love to have for my Moodle front page. We're running 1.9.7. I wish to replace the simple default "search courses" with an advanced search like yours. I'd like it to be just an element on the front page. I was thinking about using a database activity for it somehow but I am not convinced.
Do you think it would be possible to develop something similar for 1.9? How much effort would it cost in your opinion? Maybe you’re aware of another existing solution/plug-in for advanced course search? And the last point is how you add metadata to your courses to be used as filters?
I’m not a newbie but I’ve been always working with the “default” Moodle.
Thanks,
Maja
+1 for Colin - definitely check out mooch. I'd also go to the Moodle Exchange course - there's a variety of pre-built moodle activities being shared there.