The ANGEL Community Hub is an open community for in-depth discussion around ANGEL, Penn State's Course Management System. Anyone with a Penn State User ID and password can join. Membership includes your own blog space to discuss matters related to ANGEL, the ability to read and comment on other member's postings, and access to other resources such as ANGELshorts, a monthly publication during the semester covering the five essential things you need to know about a particular feauture of ANGEL, and podcasts and movies covering various issues about ANGEL.

Using ANGEL for Teaching During a Pandemic

As reports of cases of the H1N1 flu virus increase around the country, Penn State recognizes that large numbers of faculty and students may be unable to teach or attend classes due to illness or because they are home-bound, caring for family members. ANGEL, Penn State's course management system (https://cms.psu.edu/default.asp), can be a vital resource for sustaining the continuity of your class during this time. ANGEL can assist instructors with delivering content to students, by fostering communication and discussion between instructors and students as well as student-to-student communication, and by providing a medium for assessment and feedback. Below are some steps instructors can take using ANGEL in order to continue teaching and learning activities with minimal disruption even if classroom attendance or traditional instruction is not possible.

Adding Robust Content to Your ANGEL Course
You can upload a wide variety of file types into ANGEL for students to download, including Web pages, text documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, audio files, and more. Almost all file types are supported within ANGEL, although it is important...read more

Fostering Communication and Discussion
ANGEL has several kinds of communication tools to aid instructors with keeping the students informed as well as maintaining class discussion and interaction. These tools include Discussion Forums, Course Mail, Live Chat as well as Announcements and Polls...read more

Using ANGEL for Assessment and Feedback
ANGEL has a variety of ways to assess student work including the ability to grade all lesson content items and link them to the Gradebook. The most common assessment items include quizzes, drop boxes, and discussion forums...read more

kkm11's picture

Problem with timed quizzes being submitted after a quiz has automatically closed

I am working with an instructor on a course that uses 90 min, timed quizzes. The quizzes are available during a short, 30 min window of opportunity. Some of the settings for the quiz are:
• disabled time warning under "Time settings"
• "Automatically submit when time limit expires" is selected
• Max attempts = 1
• "Warn about incomplete items" is selected
• auto save is disabled
• "Do not allow users to save and finish later" is selected
• Full Review is selected

The problem we're having is, say a student logs on 1 minute before the quiz closes and they complete the quiz before the 90 min and submit it, ANGEL shows the results as expected...

Qi Dunsworth's picture

Assignments and Category

For a long time, I have always believed that if a number of assignments are lumped under one category, and if there are more than one category in the gradebook, those assignments must bear equal number of max points or the calculation would not be correct. It seems that there are exceptions.

Exception 1: there is only one category called "course grade" and the gradebook is in "point" mode.
Exception 2: there are more than one category, and the gradebook can be of "point" or "percentage" mode, but the weight of each category are numbers in terms of points, such as "auto-calculate." That is the last line on the Category screen shows the total points of the course (such as 600) and 100%.

Any others?

Jennifer Mullen's picture

ANGEL update 10/7/2009

A small update is planned for October 7, 2009 during the maintenance window. For details please click read more. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact ANGEL Support.

Jennifer Mullen's picture

ANGEL 7.3 lessons tab icon feedback

The ANGEL team has received feedback that it's difficult for course editors/instructors to tell whether an item is available to students or hidden from them. The icons for items that are hidden are "greyed out" (have a lower opacity) than the icons for items that are available to students.

To address this issue, the ANGEL team has created a new set of icons that we plan to release in a future update. We would like the community's feedback on these icons.
Please take a moment to review this image of the Lessons tab in grid mode with the new icons, then vote in the poll. If you have any suggestions for the icons, please make them in the comments.

Proposals sought for 2010 Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology

Faculty members are invited to share innovative uses of technology to enhance teaching, learning, and research at the Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology. This free event will be held Saturday, March 27, 2010 from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, University Park. A continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. This year's theme is "Digital Scholarship and the Culture of Teaching and Learning."
The keynote speaker is Dr. Michael Wesch (http://ksuanth.weebly.com/wesch.html), assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. Dubbed "the explainer" by Wired magazine, Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the effects of new media on society and culture. His videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award and the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology, and he was recently named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic. He has also won several teaching awards, including the 2008CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities.

Members of the faculty who are using technology to enrich teaching, learning, or research are encouraged to submit a presentation proposal using the online form at http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/conference/proposals. Topics could include faculty and students collaborating on a project or an assignment showcasing any number of collaborative tools and new learning spaces involved with teaching and research. Some examples include the use of electronic portfolios and blogs, the incorporation of digital media, the use of games, virtual worlds, and simulations, and any best practices that foster scholarship in the digital age. Sessions can be in a variety of formats, including group presentations, panel discussions, poster presentations, demonstrations, small-group discussions, and other activities. Each session should include some discussion of practical aspects such as the tools used, sources of support, best practices, and how the application of technology can be transferred to other disciplines. The deadline to submit proposals is October 30, 2009. For more details and to register, visit http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/. The Symposium is sponsored by Information Technology Services.

kkm11's picture

CSS not displaying in ANGEL Folders

I'm looking for some help with CSS coded pages in ANGEL. I'm relatively new to CSS and have been pleasantly surprised that ANGEL can play well with CSS pages. (I'm working in a test ANGEL group called "Kent's Sandbox.")

Here's a link to the archive (http://www.personal.psu.edu/kkm11/files/css_angel_example.zip) of the very simple site I'm working with.

I know ANGEL can display my CSS properly. I uploaded the archive and this what I see (right-click to view a full-size version of the images):

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