Oncourse CL Menubar: Overview

What it does

In your site, the menubar is a customizable column along the left of the screen that contains links to numerous collaborative tools. Site leaders have special permissions to add, edit, and delete tools with Worksite Setup or Site Setup. Therefore, the same tools will not appear in every site.

The menubar contains links to the collaborative tools used in your site.

Key concepts

Adding tools: A site participant with the appropriate role can modify the content of the site's menubar by adding or subtracting tools using the Site Setup tool.

The site owner can choose to display (or hide) the following tools in the menubar:

• Home: This is the course or project site home page. Home can contain a list of recent announcements, discussion items, and chat messages. Also, participants can access Privacy Status and Message Center notifications here.
  
  
• Announcements: Post current, time-critical information (e.g., to inform users of changes in the schedule or policies of the class).
  
  
• Assignments: Post, submit, and grade online assignments. Your participants can submit assignments electronically for grading and comments.
  
  
• Calendar: Post and view deadlines and events (e.g., class session dates, assignments dates, and cancellations).
  
  
• Chat Room: Hold real-time written discussions with other site participants. Chat is faster and more convenient than waiting for participants to post in the discussion area.
  
  
• Drop Box: Create areas for private file sharing between site leaders and participants.
  
  
• Email Archive: View email sent to the site.
  
  
• Evaluations: ePortfolio Evaluations Tool
  
  
• Forms: ePortfolio Forms Tool
  
  
• Forums: Create discussion forums.
  
  
• Glossary: ePortfolio Glossary Tool
  
  
• Gradebook: Calculate, store, and present grades.
  
  
• Library Resources: Link to online resources at Indiana University Libraries.
  
  
• Matrices: ePortfolio Matrices Tool
  
  
• Messages: Add private messaging to your site.
  
  
• News: Link to RSS newsfeeds.
  
  
• Original Test and Survey Tool: Create and deliver tests and surveys.
  
  
• Podcasts: Manage individual podcasts and podcast feed information.
  
  
• Post'Em: Upload and share .csv files to display feedback (e.g., grades and comments) to site participants.
  
  
• Presentation Layouts: ePortfolio Layouts Tool
  
  
• Presentation Templates: ePortfolio Presentation Templates Tool
  
  
• Presentations: ePortfolio Presentations Tool
  
  
• Reports: ePortfolio Reports Tool
  
  
• Resources: Upload, store, and share files and URLs.
  
  
• Roster: View the list of site participants.
  
  
• Site Stats: Show site statistics by user, event, or resource.
  
  
• Styles: ePortfolio Style Helper Tool
  
  
• Syllabus: Create and display a course syllabus, or have it point to a pre-existing online syllabus.
  
  
• Web Content: Add web page links to the menubar.
  
  
• Wiki: Collaborate with other participants to create and maintain web pages.
  
  
• Wizards: ePortfolio Wizards Tool
  
  
• iTunes U: Allow publishing of podcasts.

Site Setup displays information about the site for site participants. Site leaders can use this tool to add participants, edit tools, manage groups, and import files. This tool is part of every site and cannot be deleted from the menubar.

The Help tool has support documentation for all the tools and can contain links to other support resources. Help is also part of every site and cannot be deleted from the menubar.

Note: 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 then 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.

Help documentation

For help documentation about the Menubar, see Oncourse CL Menubar: Help contents.