Overview
We’ve updated the global content search to provide our users with a quick and easy way to find relevant resources and activities within itslearning. With expanded capabilities, moved to a prominent location in the top menu and improved accessibility. This tool is designed to significantly enhance users’ ability to find and engage with course-related content.
Users can now search for plans and topics in addition to courses, resources, and activities.
The search functionality also includes content in archived courses, ensuring comprehensive coverage of all relevant content.
How to Use the Search
The search bar is now prominently placed in the main menu for easy access.
As you type your search terms, the top seven results will appear in a dropdown list. You can navigate to all results view by clicking the link at the bottom of the dropdown.
First item on the list receives focus automatically. If you press “Enter” without selecting another item, you will be taken to the first result in the list.
The search component is fully accessible and navigable with a keyboard and compatible with screen readers.
Tips
Using a partial keyword acts like a wildcard, there is no need to use an asterisk. For example, if you search for bio, your search will match with biology, biologist, biological, biosphere, etc.
If you use more than one term, search will find items containing any of the terms. The more matches an item has for each term, the higher it will appear in the results.
Use of quotes:
- Searching for “symbiosis and energy use” will return items with the exact phrase match.
- Searching for “bio” will find exact matches and not include derivatives of the root word.
- Searching for “symbiosis” “energy” will return only items that match both terms.
Search Results
Search results are ordered by relevance to the search terms. If multiple results are equally relevant, the one updated more recently appears first.
Search results include only content that the user has permission to view. For example, students will not see results from courses they are not enrolled in or course contents that the teacher has not set visible to students.
The search index is updated whenever changes are made to course elements, permissions, or visibility. These updates typically processed within ~20 seconds. In rare cases, the index might be out of sync with the latest changes, and a user might see a result they should not. If this happens, the user will receive a notification that they do not have permission to view the resource.
Important: itslearning uses titles and description fields to find resources. The better the element title and description, the easier it is for users to find it with the search tool. For this reason, we strongly recommend that teachers have a good naming policy for their resources and use the description field to improve searchability. This is especially for Files, because itslearning does not search inside the file.
Filtering Search Results
Users can narrow their search results using filters available in the “Advanced search” option or after selecting “All results (x)” from the dropdown. Available filters are:
- Status: Filter by active or archived courses.
- Type: Filter by specific item types, such as Plans, Assignments, or Files.
User Search
The global search does not include users. If “user search” is enabled in the profile settings, a separate link to user search is provided in the search component and in the info banner at the top of the search results page.
In case content search is disabled for the user, then user search can be found under the Personal Menu (click on user’s profile picture).
Note: User search has not yet been modernised in this development round.