ANGEL Community Hub

I am pleased to announce our second Community Hub Town Hall. This one will take place on Wednesday May 2nd. Read on for details.

Allan and I completed a brief (under 10 minutes) preview of ANGEL v7 for Penn State as it looks now. We cover, at a high level, the new buttons that replace the text links on the left-hand side of the page, the guide tool which incorporates such tools as the course map and what's new, we look at some of the things that have stayed the same, e.g. the syllabus and lessons tab plus we look at the new tabs (resources, communicate, reports, and manage). This is a quick once-over demonstration designed to let you know what to expect when we upgrade at the end of the spring semester.

Jeff and I thought that a quick run-through of features in ANGEL 7.1 would be useful for people who don't have the time to wade through all of the other vodcasts. So here it is...a 35 minute overview of the new features in ANGEL 7.1. One thing to note: not all of these will appear as you see them in this recording. For example, we are going back to a simple Syllabus tab instead of the Course tab (which is redundant with the Resources tab).

If you'd like to see this overview, the vodcast is available through iTunesU.

Well, it's been a while since Jeff and I sat down to do a new movie about ANGEL features, so we decided to do this one on a feature that is used most intensely toward the end of a semester: the Gradebook. In this vodcast, we go through the Course Gradebook in ANGEL and discuss how they are set up and what options are available. Most of this applies to ANGEL 6.3 as well as the upcoming release (7.1).

If you'd like to see this video, the vodcast is available through iTunesU.

Allan Gyorke and myself gave a presentation on ANGEL v7.1 to the folks at World Campus today. Attached are the presentation notes. They contain a brief outline of what to expect in our version of ANGEL 7.1 come May. Please note, that the feature set has not been finalized. This document represents our best guess based on our testing so far. Feel free to post questions or comments.

With the Course Gradebook there is no longer the manually scored assignment (MSA) option under the Lessons tab, like there was with the Penn State Gradebook. Instead this option has been incorporated right into the gradebook proper. To create an MSA:

1. go into the gradebook
2. select the assignments link
3. select the add new option
4. complete the fields (assignment name, point values, etc.)
5. select save

This will serve the same function. You can add/edit scores and students can see their grades for assignments outside of ANGEL.

Preparations are underway for the installation of the Penn State version of ANGEL 7.1 on a test server. The goal is to have it up and running sometime in early April so we can put it through the paces in preparation for a May release. Toward that end, performance testing is currently being done. From this test potential problems can be identified and addressed while the Penn State version of ANGEL 7.1 is being built.