How sorting works for courses

By default, TalentLMS displays courses on the course catalog by the Date they were last updated. Users can also sort courses by Name (alphabetically), Price, or Rating.

For Admins and Instructors, courses are sorted alphabetically when visiting the Courses option from the left-side menu.

On the Learner view, the equivalent menu is My courses (1). Under My courses, courses are sorted by Date, but the user can also select to sort courses alphabetically. Learners also have the option to enable or disable Category view (2). 

With Category view selected, Learners can search and filter their view by category (3).

Note: When Category view is enabled, categories are sorted alphabetically. The courses under each category are sorted by Name by default. If there’s a course code, then sorting is based on the course code first, when Name is selected as the sorting method (read below for more information). Alternatively, the Learner may choose to sort their courses by Date. 

Course codes

Apart from categories, to customize the order by which your courses are displayed to your users when sorted alphabetically, TalentLMS offers an extra identifier: the Course code.

Here’s how to organize your courses with course codes:

In the course display pages mentioned above, when courses are sorted alphabetically, the course code is prioritized over the course name. Courses that have a code are listed first, sorted alphabetically by code and not by name (1). Courses that don’t have a code are sorted alphabetically by name.

Course codes can prove very handy for displaying courses (whether in a general list or within a category) in a specific order without changing their original names. Here’s an example:

When you have a course named “Algebra” and a course named “Trigonometry”, “Algebra” is always displayed first (whether in the general list or within their category, e.g., “Math”). Between “Algebra” and “Trigonometry”, we would probably see many other courses as the “alphabetical gap” between them is large.

To close that gap and even display “Trigonometry” first in the list, you can use course codes. By assigning “Trigonometry” with the “MA101” code and “Algebra” with the “MA102” code, you can enforce a new order where “Trigonometry (MA101)” is now listed right before “Algebra (MA102)”.

Note: Another option to customize the way your courses are displayed is to prefix their names with numbers. Since courses are sorted alphabetically based on the first character of each name, you can use two or three-digit numbers (i.e., 01, 02, 03 or 001, 002, 003) depending on the total number of your courses (i.e., if it has two or three digits). Otherwise, it cannot work (i.e., the number “10” is sorted right after the number “1”). We strongly recommend that you use course codes instead.

To add a course code to a course:

1. Sign in to your TalentLMS account as an Administrator or an Instructor, go to Courses (1), and select a course to edit (2).

2. Select Course options (3).

3. Type the Course code in the respective field (e.g., SAMP1) (4).

4. Click Save (5) to save your changes.

Note: Course codes are unique. You cannot use the same course code for different courses.