Navigating LEARN (navbars)

Navigational bars, or navbars, are used to navigate between the system and course homepages, within a course, and to access specific tools.

Minibar

The Minibar is the navbar that runs along the very top of your Waterloo LEARN page. This navbar is controlled at the system level and cannot be adjusted by a user. Items available from the minibar include access to the system homepage, the ability to search for courses without returning to the system homepage, notifications and other personal account settings.

Open

System navbar

The System navbar is the list of links that are just below the minibar. The list of items included in this navbar are system level tools and resources that are accessible from the system homepage. 

Open

Course navbar

The Course navbar is the list of items included in the screenshot below. The list of tools that will be available from the drop-down menus below will be determined by the tools that are active in the course you are looking at. This is the student view of the course level navbar.

• The Connect menu will provide access to tools in the course including Classlist, Discussions, Groups and Virtual Classroom

• The Submit menu will provide access to tools in the course including Dropboxes, Quizzes, Surveys and Video Assignment.

• The Resources menu will provide access to tools in the course including Attendance and Rubrics.

• Most tools within a course can be disabled in the course thereby removing the tool name from all course navigation.

Customizing Your Navbar

As you are developing your course, you will need to make decisions about which LEARN tools (e.g. quizzes, dropboxes, surveys, etc.) you will be using.

Important questions you will need to answer to make these decisions are:

• What activities are your students expected to do online?

• What types of interactions with the course material, one another, and you, will be expected of the students?

The Navigation bar (navbar) at the course level in LEARN provides links to many of the tools you will use.

To maintain some consistency, we have developed a default course navbar that has the most common tools displayed and has all the available links in a set relative location.

Instructors are able to "turn off" these tools if they are not being used and "turn on" others that are off by default.