Search on Topics produces surprising results

Susan Ott

Why, why, why would BB use the term Topics for articles NOT Topic related? I was searching for information on adding assignments within a Topic that are specific to that Topic. (I know I read about it a while back and want to share with my teachers.) The first 8 of 10 results listed were about building lists. Why use terminology that is central to class pages within the LMS for something completely unrelated? I would never think to search how to build lists with the term "topics". I don't want to have to scroll through pages of unrelated material hoping to find answers to my question. 


 

Morgan Kunze

@Susan Ott I had to chuckle at this because today I searched for “re-submit" and the search returned anything with the letters “re” in it. Talk about “unrelated material!”

I agree that the use of the term “topics” in the list management tools is confusing, both because of the overlap with academic topics and also just because it's weird terminology. I feel like “tables” is an understood term in relational databases and it might be a better choice in list management?

Bryna Gleich

Thank you for the feedback about search. I'll see what I can do regarding the Core results vs Academic results. I don't know why the “legacy” lists originally used the term “topic” in this way, but I do know we are making an effort to avoid this sort of syntax overlap in newer features.

One thing you can as a user is to add another keyword to the search. For example, a search for “teacher topics” instead of “topics” yields results in a different order, with Learning Management (LMS) appearing more often and higher in the top 10.