Thank Mark for your views and suggestions. I never thought about the naive user's point of view on this. I thought a new user would wave the mouse around to see what popped up, and once the initial 'imprinting' occurred (i.e., the user says "Aha! So that's how I can add a resource" of "Aha! There something here...") then it would become second nature for them to know what to do. Assumptions really. As for the impaired users, you are right. The screen reader wouldbe't be able to catch those hover-only text. Silly question: Is it a rule in many universities that the LMS has to cater for impaired students accessibility? Maybe there is a way to toggle between the two states. One for impaired students and one for non-impaired students.
Thanks for the input
Frankie Kam