Currently, if a user searches by date (in our catalog) for a course it will only pull courses that are an exact date match. So if a course is happening on May 5th, and I search by May 4th, it won’t pull it. If I search for a course that goes May 5th-7th and I choose to search May 6th, it won’t pull it. I would have to search exactly for May 5th for a single day course or exactly May 5th-7th to pull the one multi-day course and it wouldn’t pull any courses that may fall in between as well.
We are currently moving to perhaps only pulling by start date so courses that fall on or after can be pulled. But the end date would be useless. Since, multiple date filters are needed to truly search a range of dates according to the feedback I’ve received.
So there is no true way of searching for courses using a date range. That really should be changed, since using a date range to find courses is the entire purpose of having the search to begin with.
For Mayo’s site the date range function works a little different. The search works from start date and not exact dates entered.
Example: May 7-11 course – if start date entered is May 7 or earlier, the course is in the results displayed – no matter the end date. If the start date entered is May 8 or later, the course does not pull in the results.
Learners don’t know/remember exact start/end dates. When they use this function it usually because they are looking for a course that they know happen sometime in “May” (using my example) or they are looking for a course during a specific time of year because that may be the only time they can get away. It would be best if the results could pull in all courses that are taking place during the date range entered. So if I were to enter May 8-10 or May 8-25, I would still see the course that happens May 7-11.