[Global Navigation] Course Navigation Grouping

[cesbrandt]

Idea

So, the idea is pretty straightforward: allowing links on the course navigation to be grouped into submenus.

Reason

Why?

Any more questions?

Idea Breakdown Grouping Concept

While the most basic form of this idea would be sufficient, I have a slightly more complicated form to it.

There would be one group that wouldn't be given any choice, "Administration." These would be any links whose visibility is for "admins" (i.e., Bulk Date Updater, New Analytics, and Dropout Detective).

Everything else would movable to either the root navigation or groupable.

Disabled Links

Additionally, this would result in a need for new behaviour for the "Navigation" tab of the Settings page. For starters, the second space for "disabled" would be completely removed. Instead, all links would be sorted as part of the full menu and the disabled/enabled state would simply indicate whether or not to display the link.

Mock-Ups

Navigation Management

Rendered Navigation

I had to cutoff my time to draft this. I'll try to come back to at another time, but examples of navigation submenus can be found all over the Interwebs.

[nataliet]

I would love to be able to visually group navigation items in the left main navigation menu to assist students (and me) differentiate Communication items like Announcements or Chat or even Syllabus, with the Assignment items (Modules, Discussions, Quizzes, Collaborations, etc..), and other "Reference" functions (Zoom, Libraries, etc...).

How?  A couple of quick ideas: 

• Perhaps allowing users to add a small bar or additional space that can be placed where it is needed. 
• Or even a bolded Text Header with navigation items slightly indented. Similar to how Modules work. 

These are just examples - and I just gave them random semi-categorical names above.  I've tried to pair my navigation down to the minimum, but even so, I have 19 items in my navigation menu.  That's the ones the students can see; I have many more "hidden ones" in mine. 

[ErinLopez]

It would be nice to be able to organize the navigation bar to be able to chunk related information together. Divider lines or color shading or both options could help. Headings above a chuck of links below could be useful. Blackboard is able to do these things.