Tag Archives: course menu

Why Can’t I Change the Color of my Course Menu?

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I used to be able to change the colors on my course menu, but now it’s not working. What happened?
In short, the recent myLesley upgrade introduced a new theme, or look and feel. The new theme does not allow instructors to change the course menu background color or text color.
 
Why the change?
The new theme brought many improvements, including increased speed, the ability to adapt to your screen/device, and improved bug fixes. Unfortunately, the downside of these improvements is that the ability to change the colors in your course menu has been lost. We had conversations with members of TL Tech and it was decided that the benefit of an improved user experience outweighed the few features that were lost.
 
What can I do?
While you may no longer customize the color of your course menu. You may, however, add different colored menu buttons. To add menu buttons, navigate to your course Control Panel, select Customization, and select Teaching Style.

screenshot of course control panel

Scroll down to Select Menu Style. Click Text for the default black background with white text. Or click Buttons to create colored menu buttons.
 
select menu style

Click Button Library to expand the button library. For Button Type you may select pattern, solid, or striped. For Button Shape you may select rounded corners, rectangular, or rounded ends. Select the button color and style you want and click Submit at the bottom of the page to save your changes.

image of button library

Please note that the menu text color will remain white. As a best practice, we recommend that you select a button color that has a good contrast with the white text for readability and accessibility.

If your menu item has a lot of text and rolls onto a second line, your second line of text will not be visible in the button. Instead, your text will appear in the black space below your button. See the “Reading and Additional Resources” menu item in the screenshot below.

Sample course menu with buttons

 

Can I add a banner to my course?
Definitely! You can easily add a course banner to, at a glance, differentiate between your courses. The banner will appear at the top of your course’s landing page (ex Announcements) and allows you to add a pop of color or personality to your course such as the fall leaves in our image below.

sample myLesley course with banner

To add a banner image, navigate to your course Control Panel, select Customization, and select Teaching Style.
 
screenshot of course control panel
 
Scroll down to Select Banner and click Browse My Computer to upload an image. Please note that Blackboard recommends using an image that is approximately 480 x 80 pixels for your banner image. You my create or edit an existing image using a photo editor, such as Pixlr Editor.
 
select banner
 
Once you have uploaded your image, click Submit at the bottom of the page to save your changes. The banner image will then appear on the course’s landing page.
 
 

Broken Menus After Course Copy?

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In this exciting episode, Agent L helps faculty struggling with missing menu items after copying their online course.

Ben Fridayagent LBen Friday: Agent L! Online course instructors are missing menu items after copying their course! It’s a disaster!

Agent L: Ben, take a deep breath. Now, tell me what’s going on.

Ben: Okay. So the course menu on the right, is from the original course and the one on the left is from the course after it was copied into a new myLesley course. The Discussion Board, My Grades, Faculty and Technology Resources are all missing. What are we going to do!?!

two menus

Agent L: Hmmm…. I think I know what is going on. The online instructors copied their content into a blank course site where those menu items didn’t already exist. When they selected the content to copy into their course, they only checked the items they thought they needed such as the content areas and the tools they were using in their course. This seems logical, right?

Ben: Yeah. Why copy stuff you don’t need?

Agent L: Exactly. It makes sense… EXCEPT there are lots of things linked together behind the scenes in a myLesley course. One of those ‘hidden’ items is Settings, especially Navigation Settings. These are links to course tools and other types of content.

The menu items for the Discussion Board and the other missing items are just navigation links to the tool. The Discussion Board is still there. The tool link didn’t simply didn’t copy to the new course because when we left Navigation Settings unchecked we told the system we didn’t want that information.

settings

en: Okay, that makes sense, but what do we do now? Do we have to recopy all the courses?

Agent L: No. It’s an easy fix. We can create new links to the tools. It will only take a minute or two.

Click on the + sign at the top of your course menu and select Tool Link.
Tool link

Add Tool Link OptionsEnter a Name for the tool you are linking to.
Select the tool from the Type menu.
Check Available to Users so your students can the link and click Submit.

Voila! The missing menu item is back.

Ben: That’s brilliant, Agent L! But are we going to have to recreate those links every time we copy the course?  

Agent L: No, Ben. To prevent the issue, we simply need to be a little less selective when copying our course content.

Instead of tediously going through and selecting only the items you think you want to copy, click Select All at the top. Then uncheck anything you know you absolutely don’t want. For most faculty, the only thing you want to uncheck is Announcements. The Announcements tool will still be in the new course, but then you won’t need to delete all those announcements to your students from last semester.

Course Copy Options

Ben: That’s… actually much easier.

Agent L: You’re welcome, Ben.

 

agent L  Learn more about copying your course and modifying the course menu at the Agent Support Site.