ANGEL Community Hub

Within the Gradebook instructors have the ability to reorder assignments within a category, move assignments to another category, and rearrange the category display order.

To reorder assignments within a category:

1. On the main Gradebook menu, select the Categories link beneath the Gradebook Management subheading.
2. Select the check box for the category, then click the Show Tasks.
3. Select the Reorder Assignments link to reorder assignments within the selected category.

Reorder assignments by using the Top, Up, Down, and Bottom buttons

The use of multi-media files as a teaching tool is increasing. Some instructors are using movie clips to illustrate a point while others are recording portions of their material for students to reference and use as often as needed. The use of multi media files (movie and sound clips) enhances distance learning, blended learning and traditional courses. However, multi media files can be rather large in size and therefore quickly use up a lot of the 1-GB ANGEL Course file size.

Google Reader is an RSS aggregator collecting content from other blog and news sites. Using RSS you can pull information from just about any site where content is frequently updated. In this regard Google Reader is unremarkable. You can do this with any RSS aggregator. But what I really liked about Google Reader was what you could do with the content after it was pulled in with a feature called Clips.

Clips enable you to take the postings collected from other blogs via RSS, and make links to them available from your site. Your readers can see what you are following and, by selecting the link, follow along. What is nice is when readers select the link they are taken to the site of origin thus avoiding giving the false impression that the work is somehow yours. Additionally you can choose to show the items point of origin directly under the link.

An example of Google Clips off my personal blog. Note this is an actual RSS feed and not a static image.

A nice feature, that has been around for awhile, is the ability to customize the content items icons under the Lessons tab. By default, each content item has an icon associated with it, a folder with a disk for a drop box, a sheet of paper and a pen for a survey, etc. But did you know that instructors can change these icons to better suit the content of the course?

A long-standing limitation under the Lessons tab has been the inability for instructors to easily enter grades for team assignments. Most team assignments are submitted via a drop box where one student submits the assignment on behalf of the team. This means that the only grade recorded is that of the student who submitted the assignment. As such, they are the only team member who can see the grade, and the feedback until they, or the instructor, share it with the rest of the team. Plus, the instructor has to track the grade for the other team members. Instructors can overcome this limitation by utilizing the Enter Grades By Assignment option located under the Enter/Edit Grade subheading on the main Gradebook menu screen.

Course editors can use the Communicate Settings tool, located under the Manage tab beneath the PSU Course Settings subheading, to configure the mail settings for their course. For example, by default students do not have the right to forward course mail to other classmates Internet e-mail accounts. However, instructors can grant students this ability by going into the Course Mail Settings and changing the minimum rights for the Send Internet E-mail feature from the Default setting to Students/Members. By granting them this right, students will then have the option to send a copy of the message to each course member's Internet E-mail account when they send course mail.

Here is the link to the October 3rd ANGEL Town Hall. The topic was "ANGEL 7.1: Five Things Faculty and Staff Need to Know."