ANGEL Community Hub

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.

Discussion forums, threaded discussions, are completely new in ANGEL 7.3. There are dozens of new features that are designed to better facilitate teaching and learning as well as reducing the amount of time required for instructors to manage discussion forums (Read the ANGELshort on Discussion Forums). Discussion Forums have a lot of uses including fostering asynchronous (on-going) class discussion around a topic and team work. Additionally, discussion forums can be graded.

The Course Mail tool allows students and instructors to correspond with each other without requiring the use of Internet e-mail accounts. It provides access to the HTML Editor (which includes a Check Spelling tool), supports adding attachments and forwarding to Internet e-mail addresses, and allows the sender and recipients to monitor who has and has not read a message. You can access the Course Mail tool from your Profile page or from the Communicate tab of any course or group.

Live Chat is a component on the course Communicate tab by default. The Live Chat component links you to a chat room for synchronous (real time) discussion. Additionally there is a Live Office Hours component in ANGEL 7.3. This component works as a live chat room but also includes scheduling capabilities and a queue manager to control student access. Students stay in a visual waiting room until their appointment time, with options to sound an alert and to bring the Live Office Hours screen to the forefront to notify them that the instructor is ready.

The Announcements tool allows course editors to create course announcements that are displayed on the Resources tab and the student’s My Profile page. Use this tool to communicate general announcements to your students however, keep in mind students can choose not to display the My Announcements component on their profile page.

Course polls allow an instructor to gauge the opinion of class members on a variety of topics. You may post a question to stimulate a class debate or determine majority opinion on some issue. Poll questions may only be responded to once by each user. By default, the Course Polls component is on the course Resources tab. It is also an optional component the instructor can include on the Communicate tab.

Recommended Resources:
Discussion Forums
Discussion Forums: General Information
Create a Discussion Forum
Discussion Forums for Students
ANGELshorts V3 #4: Five Things You Should Know about Discussion Forums
Create Team Assignments in Discussion Forums
Grade a Discussion Forum

Course Mail
Course Mail
Forward ANGEL Mail to a Non-Penn State Address
ANGELshorts V3 #2: Five Things You Should Know about the Course Mail Tool

Live Chat
Add a Chat Room
Live Chat for Students
Add Live Office Hours
Hold Live Office Hours
Attend Live Office Hours

Announcements
Announcements
Add an Announcement

Polls
Course Polls
Add a Poll Question