ANGEL Community Hub

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.

Update: this update was applied to ANGEL on August 19.

We're planning an update to ANGEL that will make three noticeable changes. Details are available by clicking the Read More link. If you have any questions or concerns about how this will affect you, please contact ANGEL Support.

This update is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, August 19. It will be the last scheduled update planned for ANGEL until late September, so no new changes will be introduced before the start of the fall semester.

In the past, ANGEL Support has posted notes here after an update was applied. Due to changing roles and time constraints that hasn't happened a while.

We've received feedback from the ANGEL community that updates sometimes bring unexpected changes in functionality and can be disruptive. The ANGEL team takes this feedback seriously. We're going to try something new to help address this concern and post a note here about upcoming updates before they happen. We can't guarantee that this will happen for every update; sometimes a change needs to be pushed to ANGEL urgently to correct an issue, or we may not have enough lead time on an update to get together a notice, or staff may not be available to post something.

I hear ANGEL Support is getting asked this question a lot these days. I'd like to provide an in-depth look at the answer.

First, the remarks field in drop boxes have always had a 2500 character limit. Prior to a recent update ANGEL would silently not save any characters beyond that limit. To prevent this type of data loss, ANGEL now warns you that you've exceeded the limit.

Second, a common question seems to be that ANGEL claims that more than 2500 characters have been entered even when the user has only entered a few letters. This is the result of an unfortunate interaction between Microsoft Word and, well, everything else including the ANGEL HTML editor. Let's take a look at why this occurs and what can be done about it.

On July 30, 2009, Information Technology Services performed an update on ANGEL to improve the usability of the inline HTML editor. In most areas where the HTML editor is available, it will now load automatically without the need to first click the "HTML Editor" link. This change should correct issues that some users have experienced with line breaks and formatting not being retained.

Please note that the HTML editor will not load automatically in a few text areas, including the message field in drop boxes, some text fields encountered when creating or editing a question in a quiz or survey, and the answer field in essay questions when taking a quiz. To use the editor in these areas, you will still need to select the "HTML Editor" link beneath the text box. If you do not see the HTML editor when composing ANGEL mail messages, please enter your inbox, click preferences, select the HTML format for your mail messages, and save.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this change, please contact ANGEL Support.

Penn State’s Course Management System, ANGEL (http://cms.psu.edu), was upgraded from version 7.1 to version 7.3 during the weekend of May 16. The new version of ANGEL features enhancements to several existing tools, and several new tools will help course editors perform administrative tasks. For the most part, however, the functionality should remain familiar to users. To learn more about the new features in version 7.3, please visit: http://tlt.its.psu.edu/about/news/2009/angel-to-be-upgraded-to-version-7.3-weekend-of-may-16 . For more information, please contact ANGEL Support

An update was applied to ANGEL during the maintenance window this morning which included the following fixes and enhancements:

• Quota Meter We've added a revamped version of the quota meter tool to help course and group editors keep track of how much space is being used in their courses and groups. For more information and instructions on how to use it, please refer to this knowledgebase article.
• New mail notifications for courses that have ended will no longer be shown to students. When an instructor set an end date for a course using Manage > General Settings, the course will become unavailable to students after that date. There was an issue that caused notifications for any unread email in that course to still be shown even though the messages were no longer available to students. This is now fixed and the new mail notifications should no longer be shown to students.
• There was an issue that caused discussion forum posts to be automatically be marked read and no email notification to be sent if a course editor and any student are both subscribed to a forum and either of them posted in that forum. This is now fixed.
• While taking a quiz with short answer, fill in the blank, or multiple fill in the blank questions, pressing enter while answering one of those questions would cause the quiz to be submitted. This will no longer occur.
• The new Student Rating of Teaching Effectiveness (SRTE) nugget is now shown on the profile page. Please note that this nugget by design cannot be removed. However, you can move it from its default location by clicking the Edit Page link in the upper left of the profile, dragging the My Evaluations(SRTE) nugget to a new location, and pressing save.
• Several bug fixes and enhancements were made to CSCS.

Questions? Comments? Please contact ANGEL Support.