ANGEL Community Hub

Users of Penn State’s Course Management System, ANGEL (http://cms.psu.edu/), should be aware that once they have logged in, if they have been inactive for 90 minutes, their session will time out and they will be logged off. Five minutes before the 90 minutes of inactivity have elapsed, a message will pop up asking the user whether he or she wishes to continue the ANGEL session. If the user clicks the “Stay Connected” button in the pop-up message, the session will continue. If 90 minutes of inactivity have elapsed and the user has been logged off, in order to start a new session, he or she must close all Web browsers, then again open a browser and log on to ANGEL.

Faculty members at University Park who would like one-on-one tutoring on teaching, learning, and class management tools can apply to have a technology-savvy student help them acquire computer skills on a range of topics. Through the Technology Learning Assistant (TLA) program, students tutor faculty in their offices on PowerPoint, Excel, file management, e-mail, Web page development, electronic gradebook software, and other applications and tools. TLAs can also demonstrate how to use Penn State services such as ANGEL, podcasting and iTunes U, Adobe Connect desktop videoconferencing, ITS Streaming Services, and the Blogs at Penn State.

ANGEL message boards are no longer supported. The message board tool was phased out in May 2007 and replaced by the discussion forum tool. While message boards can be converted to discussion forums currently in ANGEL 7.1, when ANGEL is upgraded to 7.3 following the spring semester it will no longer be possible to convert message boards to discussion forums. For this reason, all remaining message boards in all courses and groups must be converted to discussion forums before fall 2007 courses and inactive groups are archived on January 21, 2009.

The ANGEL Help & Information Guide knowledgebase will be unavailable from 4:00 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 23 until noon Wednesday, Dec. 31 due to maintenance. The Help & Information Guide is located at http://angelkb.ais.psu.edu/ and accessed by clicking the help button within ANGEL. For any questions, please contact ANGEL support at angelsupport@psu.edu.

To optimize the performance of Penn State's Course Management System, ANGEL, during fall finals week, the Import Wizard and Export Wizard tools will be turned off from 4:00 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 13 until 6:00 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 20. These tools include the Copy Course, import Content Package, import Master Course, and export ANGEL Archive functions. The tools for importing and exporting individual lesson content items between courses and groups will be turned off as well. These are only temporary changes to improve ANGEL performance during the period of intense usage associated with finals week.

Faculty who want to start using Penn State’s Course Management System, ANGEL, but are not sure where to start can attend a free workshop entitled “ANGEL: Start Using ANGEL in Your Course Right Away." This will be offered:

• Wednesday, Sept. 3, 8:30-10:30 a.m., 116 Wagner Building, University Park
• Wednesday, Sept. 3, 1:45-4:00 p.m., via an online Adobe Connect videoconference

An “ANGEL: Course Gradebook” workshop will also be offered, as follows:

• Thursday, Sept. 4, 1:00-3:00 p.m., 116 Wagner Building, University Park
• Friday, Sept. 5, 1:45-4:00 p.m., via Adobe Connect

For more information and to register beginning Aug. 25 at 9:00 a.m., visit http://its.psu.edu/training/.