Menubar: Overview
In a course or project site, the menubar is a customizable
column along the left of the screen that contains links to numerous
collaborative tools. Site maintainers have special permissions that
allow them to add, edit, and delete tools with the Worksite Setup or
Site Info tool. Therefore, the same tools will not appear in every
site.
The following tools can be added to the menubar:
- Home: Clicking
Home
takes you to the
course or project site homepage. Homepages can contain a list of
recent announcements, recent discussion items, and selected resources.
- Schedule: Viewable in a calendar or list format,
the schedule can contain class session dates, deadlines, web
assignments dates, special events, cancellations, and other items of
interest.
- Announcements: Use announcements to inform users
of changes in the schedule or policies of the class, as well as to
answer questions or make general comments.
- Syllabus: Use this tool to create and display a
course syllabus, or have it point to a pre-existing online syllabus.
- Resources: This function allows you to post
documents, electronic files, or URLs for users of a course
or project site.
- Discussion: Use the discussion function to post
asynchronous conversations by topic or category.
- Assignments: You can assign several kinds of work
on the course or project sites. Your participants can submit
assignments electronically for grading and comments.
- Drop Box: With this function, you have
the option to create individual Drop Boxes with private folders for
each student or other user's work.
- Chat Room: Use chat for real time online
discussion with other worksite participants who are also logged into
the workspace. Chat is faster and more convenient than waiting for
information to post in the discussion area.
- Email Archive: This is a repository for email
sent to the worksite email address.
- Presentation: You can present a slide
show of images to many viewers at once, or have them step through the
show on their own.
- News: In the news section, you can read topical
news from online news sources.
- Web Content: This tool allows you to view
specific web pages in the content area of the worksite.
- Site Info: This section displays information
about the site for site participants.
- Roster: This tool lets you view the participants
in your site, and their roles.
- Message Center: Use Message Center to create an
unlimited number of discussion forums for your site. You can send
private messages to other site participants, reply to private messages
sent by other participants, post messages addressing a topic in one of
the discussion forums, and post responses to the forum messages of
other participants.
- Help: You will find answers to some common
questions here.
Key concepts
Roles: A site participant with the appropriate
role can modify the content of the site's menubar by adding or
subtracting tools using the Site Info tool.
Adding tools: Your system administrator controls
which tools are available on your system. When new tools become
available, or users' needs change, your system administrator can add
tools to the system, and they will appear in the list of tools that
you can add to your site.
Things to consider
- If your system allows it, create a practice site so that site
participants can familiarize themselves with the tools, functions, and
options.
- To avoid the accidental loss of resources, assign roles wisely.
Assign roles with broad permissions only to co-instructors, and others
whom you can trust to edit your site. Everyone else should get a more
restricted role, allowing access but not site manipulation. For
instance, if another participant removes the Syllabus tool from your
site, it will irreversibly remove the syllabus information that you
stored there.