Development of a Moodle Course Content Filter Using Meta Data

Moodle is an E-Learning platform that is in use by many educational institutions across the world. This paper outlines the development of a Course page Content Filter created in PHP which can be applied to a Moodle course page to filter the course’s learning objects, displaying only those documents matching the filter selections. The Course Content Filter has been developed as a code patch to be installed to the Moodle installation and activated by the Moodle administrator. It comprises of additional settings to both the Moodle course page and the learning object upload pages. Filter controls appear at the top of the student’s course page allowing a student to actively filter the course page content. The Course Content Filter assists students in navigating to the learning objects relevant to their needs. An example, as described in this paper, is the filtering of course content by Learning Channel. Learning channels are the modes in which a student can take in information. Providing a student with course material in a form relevant to their learning style makes course content more accessible, optimising the learning experience. For example, a student with a preference for their visual learning channel will benefit from course material presented in a visual form. The content filter described here will allow them to quickly access content which is optimised for their learning preference. This paper also outlines advantages of such a content filter in a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), reviews current availability of such filters, and describes our approach to developing such a filter.