## 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 leaders 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, 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.