Finding Your Way in the System

To help you find your way around the course, there are a variety of navigation tools. Below you will find an introduction to the most useful of these.

The Course Homepage

The course homepage is the first thing you saw when you entered this course. It lists the entire contents of the course, broken up into an introduction and a number of topics that appear down the centre. It also contains a variety of other navigation aids, called blocks, on the left side and these are outlined below.

To view all the topics again simply click again on the icon, which should now show two small white squares. Alternatively, if you wish to display a different topic on its own, you can select it from the drop-down list found directly underneath the single displayed topic.

My Dashboard

The menu at the top of the page includes a Dashboard, which drops down to give you quick access to your personal Home page, your Profile page, your Calendar, and other personal pages.

Navigation Block

The Navigation block provides additional links to several other parts of the online system, including My Home, Site pages, My Profile, Current Course, My Courses, and expandable menus for each course.

Dock Options

The blocks on the left side of the page can be hidden or docked.  Hiding the block collapses the information in the block so only the block title is displayed.  Docking the block removes the block and converts it to a tab on the left side of the page.  If all blocks are moved to the dock, the visible page will be wider.  As soon as one block is returned from the dock, the page will go back to the current width.

Breadcrumb trail

One of the most-used navigation aids in this system is the breadcrumb trail. You can see the breadcrumb trail at the top of every page (including this one). It is a line of links running horizontally underneath the menu bar.  

The breadcrumb trail on this particular page, in the upper left of the screen looks something like this:

Home > [Course Category] > [Course Name] > [Course Module] > Navigating in the System

When you hover over the links, if the appearance changes, you can click on the link to go to that level of the site.

The most commonly used link in the breadcrumb trail is the [Course Name], which returns you to the Course page.

Using the 'Back' button

Usually, when navigating in the system, using your browser's Back button will return you to the previous page you viewed. This will not work if your last action was to change the site in some way (e.g. by posting a message to a forum), because returning to an Activity with a form will attempt to add the message again. You will not break or damage anything by using the back button in these cases, though you may be presented with an error message rather than the page you expected.

Getting help

If you find yourself stuck, there are two immediate sources of help. First, hovering over most icons will produce a small pop-up text, called a tool-tip, that will give you a brief hint about what will happen if you click on it.

There are also small black circles containing a question mark next to many of the controls. Clicking on them will pop-up a window that contains help relevant to your situation.