Hiding and Unhiding Topics

When you select the modules you wish to enable for your Manhattan classroom, you'll note that for most modules you have three choices. (To select modules, click on the Configuration button on your Main Menu, then select the first item in the list: "Select modules, change course title, semester, teacher information". All of the Configuration items are covered in Configuration.)

Which modules do you want to use? You can add and remove modules whenever you wish. Removing a module does NOT delete the data within the module!

Assignments

• Disable this module

• Enable this module, and allow users to hide/unhide topics

• Enable this module, but don't allow user's to hide/unhide topics

Lectures

• Disable this module

• Enable this module, and allow users to hide/unhide topics

• Enable this module, but don't allow user's to hide/unhide topics

Handouts/Notices

• Disable this module

• Enable this module, and allow users to hide/unhide topics

• Enable this module, but don't allow user's to hide/unhide topics

...and so on...

If you choose to disable a module, a button for that module will not appear on anyone's Main Menu. Any messages posted to that module are still there, and can be viewed again once the module is re-enabled. But what does it mean to "allow users to hide/unhide topics"?

When you allow users to hide/unhide topics, the topic index - the web page they see when they first enter a module - has a few additional controls. The following is a student's view of the Handouts/Notices module:

As shown above, each message (or topic if this were a discussion module) is marked with one of three icons:

Marks unread topics, or topics that contain messages that are unread. This icon is not a hyperlink. If you position your mouse over the icon, you'll see the message: "This topic has one or more unread messages, so you can't mark it as 'sleepy' right now." You can think of these topics as "wired" instead of "sleepy" or tired. It's an active topic, since it contains at least one message you haven't read.

Marks 'normal' topics. Once you have read all of the messages associated with a topic, the icon changes from to automatically. This icon is a hyperlink. If you float your mouse over the icon, you'll see the message: "Click here to mark this topic as 'sleepy'. 'Sleepy' topics can be hidden from view by selecting the appropriate filter above." As suggested by that 'tool tip', if you click on the icon, the message will be marked as sleepy and the icon will change to

Flags topics you have marked as 'sleepy', by clicking on the icon. If you click on the 'sleepy' icon, the topic's status will change back to 'normal' and the icon will again be:

Huh?

In other words, topics that have one or more unread messages are marked with a . You can't change the status of these topics until you have opened the messages they contain. Otherwise, you can toggle a topic's status between normal and sleepy by clicking on the icon.

When you have marked one or more topics as sleepy, you can click on the "Hide sleepy topics" link above the list of messages. Starting from the above screen-shot, when the student clicks on "Hide sleepy topics" the view is now:

Note that the topic marked as sleepy in the first screen- shot "Can you read a Microsoft Word file?" no longer appears on the list. The message immediately above the list of topics tells the student "One topic you marked 'sleepy' is not listed below." and provides a link "List all topics" to restore the full list of messages. Clicking on "List all topics" would restore the page to the first screen-shot.

The purpose of all this is to allow each user to decide which topics to display within a given module. A Class Discussion module, for example, could be filled with dozens of topics by the end of an active course. Allowing your students to hide/unhide Class Discussion topics will allow them to mark older topics, which haven't been contributed to in weeks, as 'sleepy' to remove them from their list.

As the teacher, whether or not to enable the topic hiding feature is entirely up to you, on a module-by-module basis. You can safely enable/disable this feature in the middle of a course. If the teacher chooses to disable the ability to hide/unhide topics, the students' view of the Handouts/Notices module becomes:

Students (and you) have lost the ability to hide/unhide messages and all of the related icons and links are gone from the page.