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(For more resources on Moodle, see here.)
Categorization is an innate human behavior that allows us to perceive and understand the environment that surrounds us. Moodle designers must have recognized our tendency to categorize, because Moodle contains a flexible categorization system that allows for the creation of categories in which you may house additional categories and courses. Any educational program that offers courses of various varieties will invariably be using a categorization system like this for grouping courses into specific categories. A language program, for example, might group courses into skill-specific categories such as those of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. A larger entity, such as a college, would likely group courses into content-specific categories such as literature, sciences, speech communications, and the like, with additional subcategories used inside each of those main categories. No matter what the categorization system, Moodle is well-equipped to accommodate via its intuitive user-friendly course category creation interface.
We will quickly walk through the manual creation of a simple categorization system in the next few pages. It should be noted however, that course categories can be created automatically via the use of the Bulk Course Upload tool that will be introduced later in the next article. While the automated creation process is certainly a more efficient one, it is a good idea to understand how to create, edit, and adjust categories manually as the need to make adjustments may arise after categories have been created automatically, and at that point, the only practical method may be via the manual process.
Using the language program sample as an example, we will set up a categorization system that uses the traditional language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) as the highest level in the categorization system with subcategories for levels. In our example, our program will have four levels: Advanced, Intermediate, Beginner, and Basic, so we will set up each skill category such that it contains subcategories that coincide with the four levels.
Let’s get started by first taking a look at the courses and categories that exist in the default installation of our MAMP package. We’ll proceed by manually creating the categories and subcategories we need for our language program example.
An alternative method for accessing the Course category window is to simply type the word ‘course’ into your browser at the end of your website address from the front page of your Moodle site. This will direct your browser to the default file, index.php, located in the course directory (for example, for the XAMPP package, it will look like this http://localhost/moodle19/course).
If you wish to change the order in which the categories appear, you can turn editing back on and use the up and down arrows to move categories.
You have just created a simple categorization system with four main skills (Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing). Next you created four subcategories—levels, inside each of the main categories (Advanced, Intermediate, Beginner, and Basic).
As you followed the example used here or maybe created an even more intricate categorization scheme, you may have felt that the process was a bit time consuming and required quite a few mouse clicks. As mentioned in the beginning of this explanation, creating categories via the Bulk Course Upload tool is much more efficient and recommended when possible. There will be times however, when you need to create new categories after courses have already been made or to edit or rearrange categories. On these occasions, you may find it necessary to use the manual procedure so it is a good idea to be familiar with the process.
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