Global vs Course Search

Global vs Course Search

by Jez H -
Number of replies: 3

Hi All,

I am testing global search and see it does not return courses matching a title, only resources within them.

Is it possible to get global search to list courses found as well as content, or would we need a second search option to allow the searching of courses?

I am really referring to the way search used to work in Moodle which returned something resembling a category page listing courses, their course image, summary based on a search string:

moodle.org/course/search.php?search=test


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In reply to Jez H

Re: Global vs Course Search

by Joost Elshoff -
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Hi Jez,

The Global Search uses more of a search engine approach to searching for specific and accessible content for each user. It relies on indexing the site and will return text search based results for a lot of different search areas. This would allow users to text search their Moodle, looking for a specific line of text in one or more documents, files or courses.

The other search tool is quite old, and is accessible from the Site homepage, when you add the search courses box to it. In addition, there's a Basic Course search block that you could also use. This block hasn't been updated in well over a year, but supports Moodle up to 3.5, so it might just work.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Joost Elshoff

Re: Re: Global vs Course Search

by Jez H -
Hi Joost,

Thanks for your reply. The issue I have with the global search at the moment is that users are used to using that to find courses quickly, particularly academic staff who have access to many different courses and the global search does not help them any longer. It seems odd that global search can only finding content from within those courses but not also list the url of the course itself?

What I was trying to find out is whether there is a way to get the global search to also return courses in its results, I mean, it can hardly be considered "Global" search if it cannot find courses can it!
In reply to Jez H

Re: Global search not finding courses

by Helen Foster -
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Hi Jez,

I just tried on moodle.org and on https://sandbox.moodledemo.net searching for courses using the global search. Each time the courses were listed first in the search results. Thus, I'm confused as to why you don't see courses in your search results.

Are all the settings in 'Manage global search' left as default? Perhaps you could try changing them then doing a search to see if you can figure out how to reproduce your problem?

Average of ratings: Useful (1)