Resolving Unexpected Course Navigation Menu Collapse

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Last updated: Jan 27, 2022 by Sarah Nguyen (Deactivated)
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This article covers how faculty, students, and staff can get their Blackboard course navigation menu to reappear when it collapses unexpectedly. 

Course Navigation Collapse

HuskyCT users may notice the course navigation menu is collapsing unexpectedly on some devices and browsers. A recent software update, intended to address responsive design goals, has resulted in this unintended side-effect.

The described behavior occurs when:

  • Your display resolution is 1024 x 768 (or lower).

  • Your web browser window has been minimized to 1024 pixels wide or less.

  • You are using a mobile browser (including iPad, Smartphone, and Tablet). 

In the below illustration, the course navigation menu is fully collapsed. Its contents have been reduced to a thin vertical line (outlined in red in the illustration), making it nearly impossible to effectively navigate the course.

Despite a lack of visual clues, the course navigation menu can be expanded again by hovering your mouse over the collapsed menu (as seen at the far right edge of the browser window). 

The vertical bar’s color will change and a small tab containing a single white arrow icon will be visible, as shown in the image below. 

Clicking on the arrow tab will temporarily expand the navigation menu.

Clicking on a content area from the navigation menu (e.g. Announcements, Course Content, etc.), will unfortunately result in the menu collapsing again. ITS has confirmed with Blackboard support that this new responsive feature cannot be disabled. However, support has acknowledged it as a software defect and we expect they will provide a solution in one of our upcoming updates. On mobile devices, users can transition to one of HuskyCT’s mobile apps (available here for iOS, Android or Windows). Mobile browsers have been somewhat effective in the past. However, Blackboard has indicated they are not officially supported.

Assuming the display supports it, users on non-mobile devices can try increasing their screen resolution to a value greater than 1024 x 768. If desktop and application rendering becomes difficult to read, try increasing the browser zoom and/or display icon/font sizes. ITS will update this article when the issue has been fully resolved by the vendor.

For more information or assistance with HuskyCT, contact the Educational Technology Office at edtech@uconn.edu or (860) 486-5052.

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