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Roadmap Tutorial

Module by: Elizabeth Bartmess, Mark Husband

Summary: A description of the Connexions Roadmap and Annotation features.

The Connexions Roadmap

The Roadmap is a tool for navigating your way through a Connexions course. It consists of the Connexions toolbar and the Courseview. You can use the Roadmap to move from module to module within a course or to return to your place in the course after you have branched off the course path set up by the instructor or linked to another Internet site.

Note:

Currently the Roadmap is available only with the Mozilla and the Netscape 7.x browsers.

The Connexions Toolbar

When you launch Mozilla or Netscape, you should see the Connexions toolbar as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The Connexions toolbar
Figure 1 (toolbar.png)

From left to right, the Connexions toolbar contains the Connexions logo (a link to the Connexions home page), the title of the module you are viewing, and buttons to display the previous and next modules, search for a module or course, display Roadmap help, access a dictionary, and show or hide the Courseview.

If this toolbar is not visible, you can display it by going to the View menu, selecting Show/Hide, and making sure Connexions Toolbar is checked. If this option does not appear in your Show/Hide menu, you may need to install the Connexions Roadmap software or contact your system administrator.

Figure 2: Enabling the Connexions toolbar
Figure 2 (view-menu.png)

Enabling the Roadmap

Once the toolbar is visible, you can click Show/Hide at the far right of the toolbar to display the Courseview in the left panel of the course display. When you load a course, it will appear in the left pane. You can hide it by clicking Show/Hide again.

Note:

If you are using Mozilla, the Mozilla sidebar may be visible to the left of the Roadmap. You can hide it by pressing F9 so that you have more screen space. You can redisplay it by pressing F9 again at any time.

The Previous and Next Buttons

Once a course is loaded, you can navigate through it using the Previous and Next buttons to the right of the course's name on the toolbar. This is not the same as your browser's Forward and Back buttons. Previous and Next cycle only through modules in the loaded course. Should you leave the course to display another web page, Previous and Next will display the previous and next modules in the course sequence.

Other Toolbar Buttons

  • Clicking the Connexions logo on the left of the toolbar displays the Connexions home page.
  • Search displays the "Search the Connexions repository" web page, where you can search all modules by keyword (basic search engine), module name, module ID, author name, maintainer name, or full body text.
  • Help displays this module.
  • Dictionary displays a dictionary web page, which is useful for looking up words as you go through the course.

The Roadmap Courseview

The main part of the Roadmap is the Courseview and is shown in Figure 3. Courseview is the left panel in the Roadmap and displays a listing of modules for the course you are browsing. To use Courseview, or to view modules, you must be connected to the Internet. If you do not have a course loaded, the top of Courseview states "No Course Selected", and the Courseview panel is empty.

Figure 3: Connexions module with Roadmap showing
Figure 3 (roadmap.png)

Sizing the Courseview Panel

To change the size of the Courseview panel, click the yellow portion of the vertical bar between courseview and drag the box to size the panel. If you click the yellow bar once or if you drag the bar to less than the minimum panel size, the panel collapses. Click the yellow bar once to open the panel again.

Loading a Course

To load a course, click the Course link at the top of the Courseview panel. Then select Open from the drop-down menu. See Subfigure 4.1.

Figure 4: Opening a course
Subfigure 4.1Subfigure 4.2
Subfigure 4.1 (courseopenclose.png)Subfigure 4.2 (coursechoose.png)

This opens a dialog box for selecting a course. See Subfigure 4.2. Choose a course from the list and click OK. This loads your course and displays the list of modules in the Courseview. See Figure 5.

Note:

It may sometimes be necessary to load a course using a URL. This is not the same as using a URL in a web page. To load a course through the Roadmap, you must use the Choose Course dialog. Type the URL in the "Enter course URL" field and click OK.

Figure 5: Courseview
Figure 5 (courseview.png)

Annotations

An annotation is a note that is associated with a specific point in the text of a course or module. These notes do not appear within the text. They appear in a dialog box that is opened when you click the annotation icon that appears in the text. Authors, instructors, and students can enter annotations. Authors and instructors enter course annotations. They are accessible to anyone viewing the text. Students enter personal annotations. They are private, user-specific, and can be viewed only by the person who entered them, like a bookmark in an Internet browser.

Note:

You must have the Connexions Roadmap installed to use the annotations feature.

Viewing Annotations

To view an annotation, click the icon. A dialog box opens and displays the annotation. Course annotations appear in a "Course Annotation" dialog box. Personal annotations appear in an "Annotation Body" dialog box. The icons in the text vary according to the annotation type. You can hide the annotation icons if you consider them distracting while reading the text of the course or module. To show or hide the annotation icons, use the following steps:

  1. Click the Annotations link at the top of the Courseview. A menu of two items opens: Add and Show/Hide.
  2. Click Show/Hide. A menu containing two items opens: Course Annotations and Personal Annotations. If a check mark appears to the left of an item, the icons for that item will be visible in the text.
    Figure 6: Annotation "Show/Hide" menu
    Figure 6 (annotationmenu.png)
  3. Click an annotation item to add or remove the check mark, as desired.

Entering a Personal Annotation

To enter personal annotations in the text of a course or module, use the following steps:

  1. Highlight the text where you want to add the annotation.
  2. Right click your mouse on the highlighted text. A menu box appears near the cursor.
  3. Select Annotate Current Selection with Roadmap from the menu. The Annotation body dialog box opens.
    Figure 7: "Annotation body" dialog box
    Figure 7 (annotationbodydialog.png)
  4. Type the wording of your annotation in the text box.
  5. Click the down arrow in the "Type" field and select the type of annotation from the drop-down menu. The types are: Comment, See Also, Question, Explanation, Example, Change, and Advice.
  6. Click the down arrow in the "Language" field and select the language for the annotation from the drop-down menu.
  7. Click Post to record the annotation. An icon appears in the text where you entered the annotation.

Deleting a Personal Annotation

To remove an annotation, view the annotation and click Delete. This button only appears in the "Annotation Body" dialog when you display an existing annotation. Connexions deletes the annotation and removes the annotation's icon from the text.

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