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Searching Learning Repository

The Search page is the default search method when you access Learning Repository. The search gives you results based on occurrence of your search words in a learning object’s title, description, text or keywords. It also suggests alternative spellings for you to help your search.

Searches are case insensitive and results include all the words that you type in the Search For field. For example, if you search for mineral sciences the results include matches for both mineral and sciences. However, the matches do not necessarily have mineral sciences included as a phrase.

A search sent to MERLOT might not use the exact matching criteria as the local repository search because of differences in the MERLOT service.

Perform a basic search

  1. Start from one of the following:
    • LOR on the navbar
    • In Content, click Add Object from LOR from the New button in any module.
    • In Manage Files, click Add Learning Object
    • Click Search / Browse in the Learning Repository (LOR) Widget on Course Home or My Home.
  2. Type your search terms. Enclose phrases with quotation marks. Use “OR” to search for instances of one word/phrase or another by adding “OR” (uppercase, no quotes).
  3. Click Search.

Searching an LOR using advanced search options

The advanced search enables you to specify more criteria for retrieving LOR content than the basic search. This feature is especially useful if your LOR has a large amount of content on the same subject.

Searching the full text of learning objects

You can search the full text of learning objects. To search the full-text index of learning objects published in the LOR, ensure the following:

  • Full Text check box on Advanced Search page is selected
  • Learning object index includes all objects, including those published before the variable was enabled.

    Note Since the full-text search only includes learning objects published after the config variable was enabled, you must engage the services of PSO to rebuild the index to include all learning objects (i.e. published earlier).

To check whether full-text indexing is enabled without accessing the config variable, click Dashboard in the LOR tool navigation.

Perform an advanced search

  1. On My Home or a course home page, click LOR on the navbar or click Search / Browse from the Learning Repository (LOR) widget if it is available.
  2. On the Search page, click Advanced Search.
  3. Type your search terms in the Search field.
  4. Limit the search using the Title, Description, Keywords, or Full Text checkboxes.
  5. Choose specific repositories, listed under Repositories and Federated Resources, to search.
  6. If you want to further narrow your search, choose from restrictions in the Search Restrictions area:
    • Search for particular types of resources.
    • Search for resources with set licensing cost and restrictions.
    • Select the types of learning objects that you want to find.
    • Select the rating of the learning objects or files that you want to find.
    • Select the status of the learning objects or files that you want to find.
    • Exclude the metadata of sub-objects in your search.
    • Limit Results to learning objects/files that you created.
    • Select the time frame during which the learning objects or files were published.
  7. Select a Metadata view from the Select Metadata View drop-down list.
    • The field associated with the metadata category is either a text box or drop-down list. For text boxes, the search string follows the same rules as those for a basic search.
  8. If you want to narrow your search of the metadata, add or remove fields from the search.
  9. Click Search.

Searching for a collection

You can search for a collection in two ways, depending on whether you're looking for any collection or for one of your own.

  • All of your own collections are listed under My Collections on the LOR Search page. Try clicking More... if you don't see the collection you want in the list.
  • You can limit your search to only collections by clicking Advanced Search and selecting Collections from the Type drop-down list under Search Restrictions.

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