Moodle-Learning-Management-System/C2/Categories-in-Moodle/English-timed
Time | Narration |
00:01 | Welcome to the Spoken Tutorial on Categories in Moodle. |
00:06 | In this tutorial, we will learn about:
Course category, how to create categories & subcategories, how to perform actions on categories. |
00:20 | To record this tutorial, I will be using:
Ubuntu Linux OS 16.04, Apache, MariaDB and PHP obtained through XAMPP 5.6.30, Moodle 3.3 and Firefox web browser. |
00:43 | You can use any web browser of your choice. |
00:47 | However, Internet Explorer should be avoided, as it causes some display inconsistencies. |
00:55 | Learners of this tutorial should have Moodle 3.3 installed on their system. |
01:02 | If not, please refer to the relevant Moodle tutorials on this website. |
01:09 | Switch to the browser and open your 'Moodle' homepage. Make sure that the XAMPP service is running. |
01:18 | Login with your admin username and password details. |
01:23 | We are now in the admin dashboard. |
01:26 | On the left side, click on Site Administration. |
01:31 | Click on the Courses tab and then Manage courses and categories. |
01:38 | We will be directed to a page with the title Course and category management. Let us understand what a course category is. |
01:50 | Course categories help to organize Moodle courses for the site users. |
01:57 | The default category for a new Moodle site is Miscellaneous. |
02:03 | Any new course will be assigned to this Miscellaneous category, by default. |
02:09 | However, it will be difficult for teachers and students to find their courses. |
02:16 | To make it easier to locate courses, they should be assigned in categories. |
02:23 | Most institutions organize courses by campus or department. |
02:30 | It is good to have descriptive names for better clarity. |
02:35 | We will go ahead and organize our courses by departments.
For eg. our Maths category will have all the Math courses. |
02:47 | Let us switch back to the Moodle site. |
02:51 | First we will understand the Course and category management page layout. |
02:57 | On the left, we have the Navigation block. And on the right, we have the Content region. |
03:05 | The content region is divided into 2 columns:
left column shows the course categories, right column shows all the courses under the selected category. |
03:20 | By default, it is showing courses under Miscellaneous category. |
03:26 | This view can be changed from the menu located at the right. |
03:32 | Click on the down arrow to see the options. |
03:36 | Now click on Course categories. This changes the view to show only the course categories. |
03:45 | Let us click on the arrow again and change the view to see only the courses.
Click on Courses. |
03:54 | Notice that a new drop-down box has appeared now. This is the category drop-down. |
04:02 | Here, we can select the category for which we want to show the courses.
Currently, it only has the Miscellaneous category. |
04:13 | Let us change the view back to Course categories and courses. |
04:19 | Now we will click on Create new category link to add a category. |
04:26 | Click on the Parent category dropdown box and select Top. Type: Mathematics in the Category name. |
04:36 | Category ID number is an optional field. This is for admin users to identify the course with offline courses. |
04:47 | If your college uses ID for categories, you can use that category ID here. This field is not visible to other Moodle users. |
04:58 | For now, I will leave Category ID as blank. |
05:03 | In the Description textbox, I will type-
“All mathematics courses will be listed under this category.” |
05:12 | Then click on Create category button. |
05:17 | We are now in the Course categories and courses view. |
05:22 | Here we can see 2 categories now: Miscellaneous and Mathematics. |
05:29 | Let us organize these categories further. Let us have separate 1st year Maths courses and 2nd year Maths courses. |
05:40 | For this, we will create a subcategory called 1st Year Maths, inside the Mathematics category. |
05:49 | Click on Create new category link at the top of the listed categories. |
05:56 | Creation of the subcategory is same as that of a category. |
06:02 | Don’t select Top as the parent category. |
06:06 | Instead, select the category under which this subcategory should belong. |
06:12 | So here, we will type: 1st Year Maths in the category name. |
06:18 | After that, we’ll type a Description and click on Create category button. |
06:26 | Notice that the categories on the left are listed in a tree format. |
06:32 | A category which has subcategories has a toggle icon to expand and collapse it. |
06:41 | Notice 3 icons on the right of the category. |
06:46 | Hover over the icons to see what they are. |
06:50 | The eye is for hiding the category. |
06:53 | A hidden category will have the eye crossed to indicate the same. |
07:00 | The arrow is for moving the category up or down.
It also has a settings gear icon which is a menu, as shown by the down arrow. |
07:12 | Click on the settings gear icon for Miscellaneous category. It has options such as Edit, Create new subcategory, Delete etc. related to the category. |
07:28 | Click elsewhere on the page to close this menu. |
07:32 | Let me collapse the navigation menu on the left for better view. |
07:39 | Next, click on the settings gear icon for Mathematics category. |
07:45 | Notice that there are 4 extra submenus here related to sorting of the subcategories. |
07:54 | All categories that have subcategories will have these menu items. |
08:01 | The number to the right of the gear icon indicates the number of courses in that category. |
08:09 | There are sorting options below the list of categories. |
08:14 | At the end, is the option to change the parent category of a subcategory. |
08:21 | To use this option, you have to check the check-box next to the subcategory you want to move. |
08:29 | Then select the new parent category and click on Move. We will not use this option right now. |
08:38 | This brings us to the end of this tutorial.
Let us summarize. |
08:44 | In this tutorial, we learnt about:
Course category, how to create categories & subcategories, how to perform actions on categories. |
08:57 | Here is an assignment for you:
Add a new subcategory 2nd Year Maths under Mathematics. Delete the category Miscellaneous. |
09:10 | The video at the following link, summarizes the Spoken Tutorial project. Please download and watch it. |
09:19 | The Spoken Tutorial Project team conducts workshops and gives certificates. For more details, please write to us. |
09:29 | Please post your timed queries in this forum. |
09:34 | Spoken Tutorial Project is funded by NMEICT, MHRD, Government of India. More information on this mission is available at the following link. |
09:48 | This script has been contributed by Priyanka. And this is Nancy Varkey along with the spoken tutorial team signing off. |
09:58 | Thank you for joining. |