Topic 5    Categorising information

How do we ‘group’ or categorise information? In the same way that you would group or categorise anything else, we look for similar properties. Think about how children are ‘grouped’ at school. They may be put into groups (classes, sets, streams) by age, sex or ability. These children have been grouped by the features that they share; these could be predominantly physical features (such as sex) or more intangible features like ability.

It is possible to group or categorise information in many ways. Think about the module that you are currently studying and the different types of module material that you have so far received.

Below is a list of different types of module material. Which of the different types have you received as part of your module material?

• printed module pack
• books (e.g. module reader, recommended reading, textbook)
• CD
• DVD
• audiotape
• videotape
• access to a module web page

All of these are different types of information. We have chosen to group or categorise them by their physical form (sometimes called format).